Kuwait talks failed because of unreasonable Saudi approach: Iran official

A high-ranking Iranian official says Saudi Arabia’s illogical and unreasonable approach caused the UN-backed peace talks on the Yemen War to fail.

Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Arab and African Affairs Hossein Jaberi Ansari (seen below) also hailed Yemenis’ support for the newly-formed Supreme Political Council.

“Without a doubt, Saudi Arabia’s illogical and unreasonable approach led to the failure of the Kuwait talks and nullified the UN envoy’s hard work,” he said.

On August 7, the UN-brokered peace talks on the Yemeni conflict ended without an agreement in Kuwait. The negotiations between delegates from the Houthi Ansarullah movement and the former Yemeni government had begun on April 21.

Jaberi Ansari stressed that the talks could have ended the war in Yemen which has had no result but the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians including many women and children.

Yemen has seen almost daily military attacks by Saudi Arabia since late March 2015, with internal sources putting the toll from the bloody aggression at about 10,000.

Noting that the attacks still continue, Jaberi Ansari stressed that with airstrikes on schools and hospitals the Saudi human rights violations have entered a new stage. 

On Monday, a Saudi airstrike on a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) hospital in the Hajjah province killed at least 19 patients and hospital staff, and wounded 24 others. A similar Saudi raid struck a school in Yemen’s Sa’ada province on Saturday, killing 10 children. 

The deputy foreign minister noted that the widespread condemnation of the attacks shows that the international community cannot remain silent to the Saudis’ atrocities, but also shows Riyadh’s neglect towards such calls.

Meanwhile, millions of people rallied in Yemen to voice their strong support for the Supreme Political Council, a body recently formed to run the country.

People took to the streets in the capital in their millions before converging on a main square to support the Supreme Political Council, formed after peace talks with the Saudi side broke down.

Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi resigned as president in January 2015 and then fled to Saudi Arabia which launched a ferocious military campaign against Yemen two months later to restore him to power. 

The decision to establish the council was made by Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General People’s Congress party back in late July. It was formally launched on August 6, when the Houthis and Saleh’s faction announced that they both had an equal share in the 10-member body.

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