NEW YORK CITY: Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UN warned the Security Council on Thursday that “the international community cannot call for de-escalation” in Yemen “while at the same time allowing the continued flow of support that enables this (Houthi) militia to continue its hostile and criminal conduct.”
The warning from Abdulaziz Alwasil came during an emergency council session to discuss Houthi attacks against the Kingdom this week. It was requested by the UK, the penholder on Yemen, and Bahrain.
He said the latest strikes on Saudi cities, which began on Tuesday, were not an isolated episode but “an extension of a systematic, hostile approach pursued by this militia since its coup against the legitimate Yemeni government in 2014,” and part of a pattern that has also targeted commercial shipping and threatened freedom of navigation in the Red Sea and the Bab Al-Mandeb Strait.
He said a press statement by the council on Aug. 7 condemning Houthi missile strikes on the Kingdom since July 13, and attacks against commercial vessels since July 22, had gone unheeded, and the militia had answered the international warnings with further escalation.
Alwasil said Saudi Arabia had backed nearly every major effort to end the Yemen war — including the Gulf Initiative, the transitional period, the National Dialogue Conference, the Geneva, Kuwait and Stockholm talks, a 2021 initiative and the UN-brokered truce in 2022 — but the Houthis had repeatedly met those efforts with renewed violence.
“My country affirms its legitimate right to defend itself, its citizens and residents, and to safeguard our national resources,” he said, adding that Riyadh “will not hesitate to take all measures necessary to deter Houthi attacks and to protect our security, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
He called on the council to enforce Resolutions 2216, which imposed an arms embargo and sanctions on the Houthis, and 2722, which demanded an immediate halt to Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea, and to send “a clear and firm message” that leaves no room for misinterpretation that attacks on the Kingdom must stop.
Yemen’s ambassador, Abdullah Alsaadi, affirmed Sanaa’s “full solidarity with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, its leadership, government and people,” and its “absolute rejection of the use of any part of the Yemeni territory as a platform for launching missiles and drones, or for threatening the security of the Kingdom or any neighboring country.”
He said the attacks amounted to the “hijacking” of Yemen’s own sovereign decisions over war and peace, carried out by a militia that operates outside of state institutions and was “militarily and technically supported by the Iranian terrorist regime.”
Saudi Arabia had shown “a great degree of restraint,” Alsaadi said, and been “the principal partner of the Yemeni people and state” in supporting institutions, salaries and services throughout the war. But he cautioned that “restraint should not be misconstrued as weakness.”
The security of Yemen and of Saudi Arabia “cannot be separated from one another,” he added, as he called for full enforcement of the arms embargo on the Houthis, and accountability for those who finance and arm the group.