Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi said that the legitimate power was about to restore the state’s three main authorities.
In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper, Hadi noted that since his arrival in Aden, he has sought to activate and protect the constitutional institutions, mainly the presidency, “and then we worked to restore the government.”
“We have recently completed the activation of judicial institutions, and soon we will finalize the regulation of the three authorities with the holding of Parliament sessions in Aden”, he added.
The Yemeni president stressed that the coup perpetrated by the Houthis and the supporters of ousted President Ali Abdullah Saleh was aimed at destroying the country and imposing the Iranian influence.
“We have realized from the start that this coup is not targeting the power, but is aimed at the destruction of the state and the implementation of a hybrid model imported from Iran, based on the idea of the guardianship of the jurist [Welayat al-Faqih – which cannot be tolerated by our people,” Hadi told Asharq Al-Awsat.
Asked about the revenues withheld by the Houthi and Saleh militias and how the legitimacy was dealing with external debt repayment and internal obligations, the Yemeni president said that coup militias have exhausted all the state’s hard currency reserves and seized state resources.
“We have tried to save the situation and protect the Yemeni monetary and banking system by transferring the central bank to Aden to save what can be saved. We succeeded in maintaining international support for Yemen by paying foreign debt service regularly, in addition to the salaries of diplomatic institutions and financial aid for our students abroad,” he noted.
He stressed that despite the scarcity of resources, the legitimate government has “acted responsibly towards all our people without distinction, and we try to cover as much as possible salaries of some vital sectors.”
“In contrast, militias still control more than 70 percent of the State’s resources, which are estimated at five billion dollars annually, from national industries, telecommunications, customs revenues, Hodeidah port revenues and Khat taxes, as well as looting and illegal toll-raising on industries and business people,” Hadi said.
Asked about his recent participation in the UN General Assembly session in New York, the Yemeni president said he had fruitful meetings with international financial and monetary institutions in order to mobilize economic support for Yemen.
“We also discussed the requirements of the Reconstruction Fund and the role of the Yemeni government in overseeing the identification of projects and the urgent need to support the government budget and enable it to meet the basic obligations,” he noted, adding: “We have succeeded in activating the Central Bank’s foreign accounts in a number of financial institutions, most notably the Federal Reserve Bank in New York.”
On the UN envoy’s efforts to reach a political solution to the Libyan crisis, Hadi said: “The coup insurgents have refused to deal with the international envoy, but tried to liquidate him physically, and even today they reject initiatives of Mr. [Ismail] Ould Sheikh Ahmed on the grounds that the Hodeidah initiative would require them to provide the central bank with state resources they are stealing.”
He underlined the legitimate government’s willingness to offer compromises in order to establish peace in the war-torn country.
