UN must support end to Yemen violence

Russia says the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) should adopt a stance in favor of stopping acts of violence in Yemen as the Al Saud regime continues its deadly aerial raids on the Arab state.

The 15-nation UN council “should speak in a principled manner for ending any violence … in the Yemen crisis,” Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told reporters in Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, on Thursday.

The top Russia diplomat made a trip to Dushanbe on Thursday to attend a meeting of the Council of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

Lavrov added that a draft resolution on the crisis in Yemen had been submitted to the Security Council. The UN body is now working to prepare the text of a joint resolution on the situation in Yemen.

“Unfortunately, the resolution was submitted after the dramatic events in Yemen took place” and the Al Saud regime unleashed its aerial attacks against the Arabian Peninsula state, Lavrov said, emphasizing that an appeal to the UN Security Council should precede any military operation.

Yemen has been targeted by Saudi Arabia’s air campaign since March 26. Saudi officials say the aggression is aimed at restoring power to fugitive former Yemeni president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.

Nearly 200 people have lost their lives in Yemen since the beginning of Saudi-led airstrikes. Many of the casualties are civilians, among them women and children.

Hadi stepped down in January and refused to reconsider the decision despite calls by the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

However, the Ansarullah movement later said Hadi had lost his legitimacy as president of Yemen after he escaped Sana’a to Aden in February.

On March 25, the embattled president fled the southern city of Aden, where he had sought to set up a rival power base, to the Saudi capital, Riyadh, after Ansarullah revolutionaries advanced on Aden.

The Ansarullah fighters took control of the Yemeni capital in September 2014 and are currently moving southward. The revolutionaries say the Hadi government was incapable of properly running the affairs of the country and containing the growing wave of corruption and terror.