Yemen's top council: Foreign interference biggest impediment to peace in country

Yemen's Supreme Political Council says continued interference in the war-ravaged country's affairs by aggressive foreign states is the biggest impediment to establishment of peace.

“Peace requires serious will and readiness to take practical steps to end aggression, lift the country’s siege [by the invaders], put an end to occupation, and eliminate all the effects of war,” the council said in a statement carried by Yemen’s al-Masirah television network on Saturday.

Saudi Arabia launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms, logistical, and political support from the US and other Western states. Simultaneous with the invasion, the aggressors and their supporters also put the entire impoverished country under an all-out land, aerial, and naval blockade.

The objective was to reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, and crush Yemen’s Ansarullah popular resistance movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of a functional government in Yemen.

While the Saudi-led coalition has failed to achieve any of its objectives, the war has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations brokered a truce between the coalition and Ansarullah, which came into effect in April, and was extended for another two months on June 2.

Throughout the course of the truce, however, Yemen has been reporting repeated breaches by the coalition.

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“The invaders continue enforcing the siege [of Yemen] and prevent ships from sailing towards al-Hudaydah port,” the Supreme Political Council said.

The council expressed surprise at a recent decision by the Saudi government to lift restrictions on “all carriers” using its airspace, in an apparent gesture of openness toward Israel following US President Joe Biden’s pledge to aggressively push for the normalization of relations between Riyadh and Tel Aviv.

The council said, “While [Saudis] open their airspace to the Israeli enemy, they insist, without any justification, to keep our airspace and airports closed.”

These crimes, it said, are being committed before the eyes of an international community, “which collaborates with an enemy that denies all human values as well as all laws and [human rights] declarations.”

The council concluded its statement by blasting the United States for refusing to change its attitude towards Yemen.

“The United States does not intend to change its approach to Yemen and the entire region and, for this reason, our nation and freedom-seeking people of the world condemn the US president’s visit to the region,” it said.

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US President Joe Biden landed in Saudi Arabia on Friday , welcomed in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah by Prince Khalid Al Faisal, the governor of Mecca.

Biden started the tour on Wednesday, visiting the occupied territories and then Saudi Arabia, in what Palestinians and Yemenis have condemned as Washington’s endorsement of Tel Aviv and Riyadh’s atrocities.

On Thursday, the Palestinian resistance movement, Hamas, dismissed the so-called Jerusalem Declaration signed between the United States and the Israeli regime, saying Biden's efforts to integrate Israel into the Middle East will fail.

The movement said the declaration only consolidated Washington’s support of Israel’s occupation and aggression against the Palestinians and their homeland.

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Hamas said Washington is blatantly and unconditionally favoring the Zionist entity and its occupation goals, adding that the so-called declaration presents more of the same American-Zionist terrorism directed against the Palestinian people.

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