RIYADH - A Saudi-led Arab alliance conducting air strikes against Houthi fighters in Yemen is considering calling truces in specific areas in Yemen to allow humanitarian supplies to reach the country, the Saudi foreign minister said on Monday.
Adel al-Jubeir also said Saudi Arabia might host a centre to coordinate delivery of humanitarian supplies.
The United Nations says the humanitarian situation in Yemen has grown desperate after weeks of air strikes.
“The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is holding consultations with members of the alliance in defence of legitimacy in Yemen and all countries that support it, to create specific areas inside Yemen to deliver humanitarian supplies, where all aerial operations will stop at specific times to allow these supplies in, as stipulated by UN Security Council resolution 2216,” Jubeir said in a statement.
The resolution imposes an arms embargo on the Houthis and on their allies - army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh - and demands they disarm and leave captured cities, including the capital Sanaa that they seized in September. Jubeir warned the rebels against exploiting the truces, saying air strikes would resume if the Shi’ite Muslim group did not abide by the truce.
Meanwhile, US Navy warships have begun accompanying British-flagged commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz as a result of Iran’s detention of a Marshall Islands-flagged cargo ship last week, the Pentagon said on Monday. Army Colonel Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, said the US Navy had accompanied one British ship through the strait, one of the world’s most important oil shipping channels, following talks between Washington and London.
“They’ve asked if we would accompany their flagged vessels through the strait,” Warren told reporters.
The Navy has been accompanying US-flagged ships traversing the strait for several days in response to last week’s detention of the MV Maersk Tigris by Iranian Revolutionary Guard patrol boats. Pentagon officials say the action is a temporary one as a result of recent Iranian actions in the waterway.
The Maersk Tigris was approached by Iranian patrol vessels last Tuesday and ordered into Iranian waters. The ship’s master initially declined and an Iranian vessel fired shots across its bow and forced it to divert to near Larak Island off the port of Bandar Abbas.
The Maersk Tigris remains there as a result of what Iranian officials have said is a court order based on a commercial dispute.
Meanwhile, Senegal will send 2,100 troops to Saudi Arabia as part of an international coalition combating Houthi rebels in neighbouring Yemen, the West African nation’s foreign minister said on Monday.
Senegalese President Macky Sall said, after returning from a visit to Saudi Arabia last month, he was considering a request to deploy troops in the Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi, a Shi’ite Muslim group allied to Iran.
Meanwhile,special forces troops fighting the Houthi militia in Aden were Yemenis deployed there two weeks ago after retraining in Gulf Arab countries, not foreign troops, Yemen’s Foreign Minister Reyad Yassin Abdulla said on Monday. Their smart uniforms and equipment led to reports on Sunday that a Saudi-led Arab coalition had sent in ground troops after weeks of air strikes against the Iran-allied Houthi rebels and army units loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
“It’s a group of the Yemeni forces. We retrained them and we send them to organise things. We are now training more and we are sending more,” Abdulla, part of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government in exile in Riyadh, said in an interview.
The rebel forces hold swathes of Yemen, having advanced hundreds of miles across the country from their northern stronghold in recent months and are now fighting for control of the southern port city of Aden.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said on Monday that the alliance was considering calling truces in specific areas in Yemen to allow in humanitarian supplies.
Saudi Arabia is trying to restore Hadi’s government and a major part of the Saudi-led coalition’s strategy is to split Saleh’s army units from the lightly armed Houthis, who might struggle on their own to hold the captured southern regions.
Abdulla said Saleh still wanted to leave Yemen but that Gulf countries would not meet his terms, which he said included taking in hundreds of his followers and granting him a pension.
“He is greedy. He is asking for a lot of money, he is asking for a lot of followers,” he told Reuters in the Saudi capital.
A conference between Yemeni political groups has been scheduled by Hadi’s government for May 18 in Riyadh, but was rejected by both the Houthis and Saleh, meaning it will not provide an opportunity for peace talks.
However, several leading figures from Saleh’s political party, the General People’s Congress (GPC), have arrived in Riyadh and pledged loyalty to Hadi’s government, Abdulla said, leaving their former president increasingly isolated.
These include former telecom minister Ahmed bin Dagher, Bakeel tribal chief Mohammed al-Shayef, former GPC secretary general Sultan al-Barakani, and former Sanaa governor Abdulqader Hilal, he said.
Other Saleh loyalists had also fled Yemen and abandoned the former president but had not come to Riyadh, he said, noting that Yemen’s speaker of parliament Yahya al-Rai’i had contacted Hadi to pledge his allegiance and was in hiding.
General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar, a once powerful figure in Yemen’s army who fled to Saudi Arabia last year as the Houthis advanced, is not in contact with Hadi’s government, he said.
Reuters could not independently verify the status of the officials Abdulla mentioned.
Meanwhile, Hadi’s government has drawn up a list of about 50 Yemeni politicians associated with Saleh whom it accuses of war crimes in the period since the Houthis seized Sanaa last year.
“Those who are coming to Riyadh and their hands were involved in Yemeni blood, they shouldn’t think that since they came here that we will waive all their previous crimes,” Abdulla said.
Coalition air strikes killed at least five people in the central province of Ibb and destroyed a cargo plane at Sanaa airport, while fighting in Aden killed at least five Houthis and two local fighters, residents said.