Was Saudi deputy crown prince angry before meeting UN chief?
Saudi Arabia's Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman says he is “not angry” with United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon for briefly blacklisting the kingdom for children’s rights violations in Yemen.
Salman, also the kingdom's defense minister, made the remark before keeping Ban waiting for 45 minutes ahead of the meeting held at the UN headquarters in New York on Wednesday.
"The Secretary General expressed hope that by the time he presents the Children and Armed Conflict (CAAC) report to the Security Council in August he could point to progress on the protection of children and civilians in Yemen," read a statement issued by Ban’s office.
The meeting, requested by Riyadh, was held some two weeks after the Saudis pressured the world body into removing it from the blacklist.
On June 6, Ban removed the kingdom from the list and announced that he had accepted “a proposal by Saudi Arabia that the United Nations and the Saudi-led coalition review jointly the cases and numbers” cited in the CAAC report.
The report indicated that the monarchy was responsible for 60 percent of the 785 underage deaths in Yemen last year.
Following the U-turn by the UN, Ban admitted that the Saudis were temporarily removed from the list after they administered “undue pressure” on the world body by threatening to cut off funding to humanitarian programs.
Noting that the move had been “one of the most painful and difficult decisions" he had to make, Ban added that he had given in as threats raised “the very real prospect that millions of other children would suffer grievously.”
The UN move sparked a barrage of criticism from various human rights groups such as Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and Oxfam.
Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen on March 26, 2015, in a bid to bring the resigned president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a staunch ally of Riyadh, back to power and defeat the Ansarullah movement.
More than 9,400 people have been killed and at least 16,000 others sustained injuries since the onset of the aggression. The Saudi strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country’s facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories.
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