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Yemeni FM to Asharq Al-Awsat: UN Envoy Will Realize Futility of Peace Talks with Houthis

Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani. (Getty Images)
Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani. (Getty Images)
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Yemeni FM to Asharq Al-Awsat: UN Envoy Will Realize Futility of Peace Talks with Houthis

Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani. (Getty Images)
Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani. (Getty Images)

Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani said that his government was awaiting United Nations special envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths’ invitation to attend consultations in Geneva in September.

He stressed to Asharq Al-Awsat that the legitimate government was prepared to “go all the way” with the talks.

The envoy will eventually reach a personal conviction that peace cannot be reached with the Iran-backed Houthis, he added, noting that his predecessor, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, made the same conclusion and announced it before the UN Security Council.

Efforts to build trust must be exerted before taking any measures and this message was clearly delivered to Griffiths by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi.

These efforts must include the release of prisoners and delivery of aid, which is being looted on a daily basis by the Houthis, he explained.

“There are many trust-building steps that we had spoken about in Geneva and at the Kuwait talks in the past, but the Houthis did not agree to them,” he said.

Furthermore, Yamani said that the Houthis are using children and civilian detainees and captives as human shields.

This was demonstrated during last week’s bus attack in Saada, he noted. The militias know that the Saudi-led Arab coalition would not target a bus that is transporting children.

“Much has been said about this incident despite a lack of real information. This region does not have schools, so where did the children come from? Where were they going?” he asked.

“As I mentioned, the militias are using children as shields, to protect them from coalition strikes, in violation of international law,” the minister charged. The West is choosing to ignore these facts.

On whether the government would reject Griffiths’ invitation to attend the Geneva consultations should the agenda include articles it does not want to discuss, Yamani said: “We should not get ahead of ourselves.”

He recalled how the government had previously warned Ould Cheikh against believing the Houthis, citing that their leader, Abdulmalik al-Houthi, had been blacklisted.

“We had explained to him that these gangs would not yield to the peace conditions because they are a product of Iranian experts and [Lebanon’s] ‘Hezbollah’,” he said.

In addition, he stressed that his government refuses to discuss the proposal on the Hodeidah province at the Geneva meeting.

It will not hold negotiations over this issue because the Houthis have so far refused to withdraw from the province. The main condition in the Hodeidah proposal revolves around the militias’ pullout.

“Why are they rejecting the proposal? The government will present this question to the international community,” Yamani added to Asharq Al-Awsat.

Moreover, he said that Griffiths must take into consideration the consultations that had taken place in Kuwait in 2016.

“We were on the verge of reaching a comprehensive agreement …., but the Houthis, at Iran’s instruction, withdrew from the negotiations and refused to sign the agreement,” he noted.

Addressing foreign meddling in Yemen’s affairs, Yamani said that his ministry was exerting major efforts to confront this interference, especially in regards to Lebanon.

The foreign ministry had filed a complaint to Beirut in July over “Hezbollah’s” meddling in Yemen and was planning on filing lawsuits against all Houthi media outlets operating in Lebanon.

These outlets, he said, were operating illegally and backed by “Hezbollah”.

He noted that the Lebanese political class overwhelmingly supports Yemen and “we will therefore, exercise our right to defend our interests to the end. We cannot allow the terrorist ‘Hezbollah’ to carry out such actions.”

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Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
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Goldrich to Asharq Al-Awsat: No US Withdrawal from Syria

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat
US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich during the interview with Asharq Al-Awsat

Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Ethan Goldrich has told Asharq Al-Awsat that the US does not plan to withdraw its forces from Syria.

The US is committed to “the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with,” he said.

Here is the full text of the interview.

Question: Mr. Goldrich, thank you so much for taking the time to sit with us today. I know you are leaving your post soon. How do you assess the accomplishments and challenges remaining?

Answer: Thank you very much for the chance to talk with you today. I've been in this position for three years, and so at the end of three years, I can see that there's a lot that we accomplished and a lot that we have left to do. But at the beginning of a time I was here, we had just completed a review of our Syria policy, and we saw that we needed to focus on reducing suffering for the people in Syria. We needed to reduce violence. We needed to hold the regime accountable for things that are done and most importantly, from the US perspective, we needed to keep ISIS from reemerging as a threat to our country and to other countries. At the same time, we also realized that there wouldn't be a solution to the crisis until there was a political process under resolution 2254, so in each of these areas, we've seen both progress and challenges, but of course, on ISIS, we have prevented the reemergence of the threat from northeast Syria, and we've helped deal with people that needed to be repatriated out of the prisons, and we dealt with displaced people in al-Hol to reduce the numbers there. We helped provide for stabilization in those parts of Syria.

Question: I want to talk a little bit about the ISIS situation now that the US troops are still there, do you envision a timeline where they will be withdrawn? Because there were some reports in the press that there is a plan from the Biden administration to withdraw.

Answer: Yeah. So right now, our focus is on the mission that we have there to keep ISIS from reemerging. So I know there have been reports, but I want to make clear that we remain committed to the role that we play in that part of Syria, to the partnership that we have with the local forces that we work with, and to the need to prevent that threat from reemerging.

Question: So you can assure people who are saying that you might withdraw, that you are remaining for the time being?

Answer: Yes, and that we remain committed to this mission which needs to continue to be pursued.

Question: You also mentioned the importance of humanitarian aid. The US has been leading on this. Are you satisfied with where you are today on the humanitarian front in Syria?

Answer: We remain committed to the role that we play to provide for humanitarian assistance in Syria. Of the money that was pledged in Brussels, we pledged $593 million just this past spring, and we overall, since the beginning of the conflict, have provided $18 billion both to help the Syrians who are inside of Syria and to help the refugees who are in surrounding countries. And so we remain committed to providing that assistance, and we remain keenly aware that 90% of Syrians are living in poverty right now, and that there's been suffering there. We're doing everything we can to reduce the suffering, but I think where we would really like to be is where there's a larger solution to the whole crisis, so Syrian people someday will be able to provide again for themselves and not need this assistance.

Question: And that's a perfect key to my next question. Solution in Syria. you are aware that the countries in the region are opening up to Assad again, and you also have the EU signaling overture to the Syrian regime and Assad. How do you deal with that?

Answer: For the United States, our policy continues to be that we will not normalize with the regime in Syria until there's been authentic and enduring progress on the goals of resolution 2254, until the human rights of the Syrian people are respected and until they have the civil and human rights that they deserve. We know other countries have engaged with the regime. When those engagements happen, we don't support them, but we remind the countries that are engaged that they should be using their engagements to push forward on the shared international goals under 2254, and that whatever it is that they're doing should be for the sake of improving the situation of the Syrian people.

Question: Let's say that all of the countries decided to talk to Assad, aren’t you worried that the US will be alienated in the process?

Answer: The US will remain true to our own principles and our own policies and our own laws, and the path for the regime in Syria to change its relationship with us is very clear, if they change the behaviors that led to the laws that we have and to the policies that we have, if those behaviors change and the circumstances inside of Syria change, then it's possible to have a different kind of relationship, but that's where it has to start.

Question: My last question to you before you leave, if you have to pick one thing that you need to do in Syria today, what is it that you would like to see happening today?

Answer: So there are a number of things, I think that will always be left and that there are things that we will try to do, to try to make them happen. We want to hold people accountable in Syria for things that have happened. So even today, we observed something called the International Day for victims of enforced disappearances, there are people that are missing, and we're trying to draw attention to the need to account for the missing people. So our step today was to sanction a number of officials who were responsible for enforced disappearances, but we also created something called the independent institution for missing persons, and that helps the families, in the non-political way, get information on what's happened. So I'd like to see some peace for the families of the missing people. I'd like to see the beginning of a political process, there hasn't been a meeting of the constitutional committee in two years, and I think that's because the regime has not been cooperating in political process steps. So we need to change that situation. And I would, of course, like it's important to see the continuation of the things that we were talking about, so keeping ISIS from reemerging and maintaining assistance as necessary in the humanitarian sphere. So all these things, some of them are ongoing, and some of them remain to be achieved. But the Syrian people deserve all aspects of our policy to be fulfilled and for them to be able to return to a normal life.