Saudi Arabia, a key player in Yemen’s nearly decade-long war, on Wednesday welcomed a deal between Yemen’s government and the Iran-backed Houthis to halt tit-for-tat banking sanctions.
The deal was announced on Tuesday by Hans Grundberg, the United Nations’ envoy to Yemen, in a bid to end the warring parties’ battle for control over the country’s financial institutions.
Saudi Arabia, which has spearheaded a coalition fighting the Houthi insurgents since 2015, said it “welcomed” the agreement.
A Saudi Foreign Ministry statement expressed “support for efforts aimed at achieving peace and security for Yemen,” and said it hopes the latest deal “will contribute to reaching a comprehensive political solution” to the conflict.
Grundberg had credited the kingdom with “significant efforts” to broker the deal, cautioning however that it did not guarantee progress to end the war in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country.
The Houthis and the government had committed in December to a UN-led roadmap to end the war, agreeing to work towards “the resumption of an inclusive political process.”
But Houthi attacks on Red Sea shipping since November and subsequent American and British retaliation have put peace talks on hold.
Tuesday’s announcement came as Yemen reeled from a deadly strike on the Houthi-held harbor of Hodeidah, which Israel said it carried out in retaliation for the first fatal Houthi strike on Tel Aviv last week.
According to analysts, the agreement followed threats from the Houthis to attack Saudi Arabia.
“Threatened with new attacks, Saudi Arabia has forced the Yemeni government to abandon efforts to cut off the Houthi group… from the international banking system,” said the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies think tank.
With AFP
