The UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said in a parliamentary debate on Wednesday that other countries would "happily supply arms" to Saudi Arabia if the Britain were to cease doing so.
Johnson added that without British arms sales to the kingdom, the UK’s influence in Yemen’s conflict would end swiftly.
"To those who say, as apparently they now do in this motion, that we should simply disregard those legal procedures, be in no doubt that we would be vacating a space that would rapidly be filled by other Western countries who would happily supply arms with nothing like the same compunctions or criteria or respect for humanitarian law," Johnson said in response to a motion that called for a cessation of arms sales while a proposed UN-led investigation into alleged war crimes takes place.
"And more importantly, we would at a stroke eliminate this country’s positive ability to exercise our moderating, diplomatic and political influence on a crisis where there are massive UK interests at stake," Johnson added.
Contrary to the motion, the foreign secretary said that Saudi Arabia should be allowed to conduct its own investigation first.
Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood, who is also the UK’s Minister for Middle East and North Africa, also came under fire for his explanation of the Saudi coalition bombing of a funeral, which killed more than 140 people.
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry slammed the attack as a "deliberate mistake" and accused the UK government of hypocrisy over different conflicts in the Middle East.
"When we say one thing about Russia and Aleppo but we say another thing about Riyadh and Yemen, what the rest of the world hears is hypocrisy and double standards," Thornberry said, referring to the UK’s significantly tougher line on Syria’s war.
Saudi Arabia began its deadly campaign against Yemen in late March 2015. The strikes were meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former president Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi.
During the first year of this aggression, Britain licensed over £3 billion in arms sales to Saudi Arabia.
The war has drawn huge international condemnation, with the Saudi coalition’s actions having further devastated the Middle East’s poorest nation.
More than half of Yemen’s 22 million population are currently living at emergency levels of food insecurity and need urgent relief - especially in remote rural areas that are often overlooked by humanitarian schemes.
About 10,000 people have been killed and over 16,000 injured since Riyadh launched the airstrikes. The Saudi aggression has also taken a heavy toll on Yemen’s facilities and infrastructure.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
