The prime minister of Yemen’s National Salvation Government says there is only “one last chance” for the member states of the Saudi-led aggressor coalition to end their war on the impoverished country.
In a statement carried by al-Masirah TV on Tuesday, Abdulaziz bin Habtour warned that Sana’a will consider an “appropriate response” to the aggressor regimes that have deprived the government of its revenues.
“The countries involved in aggression are stubborn and believe that they are exerting popular pressure on us regarding salaries, however, we trust the awareness of our people in Sana’a and consider the appropriate response,” he said.
“We give the countries involved in aggression one last chance” as was stated by the leader of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.
The premier also said that currently, all the government’s revenue sources were in the hands of the occupiers.
Previously, 75 percent of Yemen’s budget revenues came from oil and gas, 15 percent from taxes and customs, and the remaining from grants, loans, etc., he added.
Today, however, Hudaydah port is the only source of income and constitutes only 10 percent of the entitled revenues which is sufficient to pay half of the salaries of civil servants every three months, according to Habtour.
Bin Habtour further said that Yemen is “still in a state of war with the aggressor countries” despite efforts by Oman to revive talks aimed at the extension of a truce between Sana’a and the coalition.
The UN-brokered ceasefire, which was reached last year, is still largely in place despite its official expiry. It has significantly reduced clashes over the past months.
The Yemeni prime minister hailed Oman’s mediating role as “sincere,” noting, however, that its impact is limited.
He emphasized that the Saudi-led coalition members are the ones who should take the initiative and stop the war.
Saudi Arabia initiated a brutal war of aggression against Yemen in March 2015, enlisting the assistance of some of its regional allies, as well as massive shipments of advanced weaponry from the US and Western Europe.
The Western governments further extended their political and logistical support to Riyadh in their failed bid to restore power in Yemen to the country’s former Saudi-installed government.
The former Yemeni government’s president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, resigned from the presidency in late 2014 and later fled to Riyadh amid a political conflict with Ansarullah. The movement has been running Yemen’s affairs in the absence of a functioning administration.
The war further led to the killing of tens of thousands of Yemenis and turned the entire nation into the scene of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
