Iran Fully Backs UN Mission for Peace in Yemen: Spokesman
TEHRAN (Tasnim) – Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said the country has announced its “full support” for the United Nations’ efforts for ending the protracted war on Yemen.
“The Stockholm consultations are of Yemeni-Yemeni nature and the Islamic Republic of Iran has emphasized the need for Yemeni-Yemeni dialogue without the interference of foreigners since the beginning of the Yemeni crisis,” Qassemi told the Persian-language Iranian Students News Agency (ISNA).
“Iran has consistently voiced its full and transparent support for the UN in its mission to pursue a proper political solution as the only solution to the crisis,” the spokesman added.
“The Islamic Republic of Iran hopes that the Yemeni parties, by adopting an independent and peaceful approach within the framework of national and Yemeni-Yemeni dialogue, will prevent acts of interference and sabotage by warmongers… in order to end the pains and sufferings of the oppressed Yemeni people,” he went on to say.
Officials from fugitive former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi's government and representatives from the Houthi movement are holding separate closed-door discussions with the UN in Stockholm until December 14 aimed at discussing ways to end the fighting that has killed an estimated 56,000 people.
The UN's special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, is seeking to introduce a set of confidence-building measures at the talks that will eventually pave the way for future negotiations to end the war.
Yemen’s defenseless people have been under massive attacks by the Saudi-led coalition for more than three-and-a-half years but Riyadh has reached none of its objectives in Yemen so far.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies have been carrying out deadly airstrikes against the Houthi Ansarullah movement in an attempt to restore power to fugitive former President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Riyadh.
The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced in a statement on March 25 that the war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured until then. The war and the accompanying blockade have also caused famine across Yemen.
