Yemen ’President’ Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi wants to hang on to power and wants his political rivals sent in to exile.
Mansour who relinquished the presidency in January last year, reclaimed it a month later when he announced he was rescinding his resignation.
The Houthi Ansarullah movement ... who have led an uprising against his government ignored his claim on the top job, arguing you can’t resign and then a few weeks later, unresign.
AFP reported Tuesday that a close aide to Hadi has said he will only ’hand over’ power to an "elected leader." The aide also advised the news agency that Hadi was rejecting the UN- and U.S. brokered ’road map to peace.’
He said he would rather have a referendum and presidential elections. He reportedly has made 9 demands including that the Houthi leaders be deported.
Hadi had previously agreed to a transition of power to a jointly agreed vice president who would stand as acting president until elections could be called. He now wants to remain in office himself arguing that the revolutionaries .. should have no say in the selection of an interim vice president.
Last month when U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry announced details of a deal that would have ended the war and seen Hadi share power with the Houthis, a deal agreed to by the Houthis and Saudi Arabia, a spokesman for the Hadi regime... said they were "not interested," claiming they were bypassed in the negotiations.
Hostilities have continued to rage despite ceasefires being entered into with both sides blaming each other for breaking truces. On Monday Saudi-led coalition troops clashed with the Houthis and forces loyal to former President Saleh near the Al-Rabuah border port in Najran.
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Hadi is now operating in Aden after the Saudi-led coalition recaptured it from Houthi forces in September last year. He had been living in Riyahd in Saudi Arabia prior to that and since his now rescinded-resignation. ... Apart from sweeping poverty, Yemenis have also been deprived of up to 50 percent of their hospitals and medical clinics, many of which have come under attack, including from aerial bombing.
Meantime while the powers-to-be in the country are at each other’s throats, the Yemeni people, according to humanitarian group Oxfam, are starving to death, and the group is calling on Britain to cease weapon sales to Saudi Arabia.
"The country’s economy, its institutions, its ability to feed and care for its people are all on the brink of collapse," Mark Goldring, Oxfam GB CEO said Tuesday.
"Yemen is being slowly starved to death. First there were restrictions on imports, including much needed food, when this was partially eased the cranes in the ports were bombed, then the warehouses, then the roads and the bridges. This is not by accident - it is systematic."
"There is still time to pull it back before we see chronic hunger becoming widespread starvation," Goldring added. "The fighting needs to stop and the ports should be fully opened to vital supplies of food, fuel and medicine. As one of the principle backers of this brutal war, Britain needs to end its arms sales and military support to the Saudis and help put Yemen on the road to peace."
Source: Mexico Star, Edited by Website Team
