In Saudi, Kerry Announces Yemen Peace Initiative, Slams Iran for Arming Huthis

W460

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry on Thursday announced a fresh international peace initiative for Yemen aimed at forming a unity government to resolve its 17-month-old conflict.

"This war needs to end and it needs to end as quickly as possible," Kerry said after a meeting in Saudi Arabia with Gulf counterparts, a British minister and the U.N. peace envoy to Yemen.

He said participants "agreed on a renewed approach to negotiations" between the Saudi-backed government and Iran-supported rebels, after three months of talks in Kuwait ended earlier in August without making headway.

Kerry lashed out at Iran, saying its arms shipments to the Shiite Huthi rebels in Yemen posed a threat to the United States.

"The threat potentially posed by the shipment of missiles and other sophisticated weapons into Yemen from Iran extends well beyond Yemen and is not a threat just to Saudi Arabia and... the region," Kerry told reporters in the Red Sea city of Jeddah.

"It is a threat to the United States and it cannot continue."

The new peace approach will have "both a security and political track simultaneously working in order to provide a comprehensive settlement", said Kerry, adding that Gulf states had "agreed unanimously with this new initiative."

He said details of the initiative would be finalized by the "parties themselves."

But the final agreement, in broad outline, would initially include a "swift formation of a national unity government with power shared among the parties."

It will also include the "withdrawal of forces from Sanaa and other key areas," and the "transfer of all heavy weapons including ballistic missiles and launchers from the Huthis and forces allied with them to a third party."

A Saudi-led Arab coalition in March last year launched a military campaign against Huthi rebels as they closed in on U.N.-backed President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi in his southern refuge in Aden.

The intervention helped loyalists push the rebels out of five southern provinces, including Aden, but the rebels still hold onto many regions, including the capital Sanaa.

More than 6,600 people, mostly civilians, have been killed since March 2015 and more than 80 percent of the population has been left in need of humanitarian aid, according to the U.N.

Comments 11
Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 20:46

Hadi resigned from Presidency with his own signature, so no he is not the rightful President any longer, unlike Assad that never resigned yet the Saudis wants to decide his future aswell.

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:23

Despite the ouster of Ali Abdullah Saleh, he still have massive support and power in the Yemeni Elite Republican forces, and a vast number of supporters throughout the populated areas of Yemen.

Him and the Ansarullah leader are now the faces of resistance against the Saudis, that stole everything from the Yemenites.

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:20

Meanwhile in Najran outskirts, Saudi Arabia the Ansarullah are now overlooking Najran city from the barren mountains.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXTy9NVUBGU

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:35

Just the fact that they are inside Saudi territory, is panic for the Saudis.
They even have to hire mercenaries from Columbia and elsewhere to try and fight the Ansarullah off.

Thumb Southern...... 25 August 2016, 21:29

no, it's not question of Sunnis or not Sunnis, because the Syrian Sunnis, HA and Iran forces are fighting your wahhabi terrorists together.... therefore it's question of subordination to retarded wahhabism or not, and in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon they've chosen already.

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:31

How about the millions of sunnis living in Assad controlled areas in Syria?
They must be ethnic cleansed too no?

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:33

If Hadi is President of Yemen, then how come he is not sitting in the Presidential palace in Sanaa?

Assad is still President of Syria, and he sits the same place he did since before the war.

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:34

Hadis seat got trashed and ran away, Assad stil sits comfortable on his rightful seat voted by the Syrian people he never retreated.

Thumb Mystic 25 August 2016, 21:50

You forgot the fact that Taez is under siege by the Ansarullah and contested.
Both the Yemeni people of Taez and the Ansarullah are trying to starve off the Saudi backed groups in that city.
Sanaa remains the capital of Yemen, just like Damascus is the Capital of Syria, is Assad in Damascus? Yes.
Is Hadi in Sanaa No.
See how well it turns out for you.

King Salman wish he could retreat from Yemen and call it a day, but he needs to save face and appear as a strong King, which he is not.
Al Sauds are weak, and they think honor can be bought.

Missing humble 26 August 2016, 00:24

Anonym Texas
Why do you answer to pasdarans and farsis?
They have another agenda of selling Lebanon and having Iran as a model.
Ask them if they feel Lebanese or farsis?
Ask them to whom goes their loyalty to Lebanon or Iran?
To whom do they feel close? To their Lebanese counterparts or to the far away farsis?

Missing humble 26 August 2016, 00:28

Anyone who sells his country to the outside is called : traitor (Collins dictionary, Oxford dictionary, Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Hachette).