Local Editor
Moscow maintains constant contact with UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths while looking for a solution to the conflict and supporting proposals aimed at larger UN presence in Yemen, Russia’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations Vasily Nebenzya said at a UN Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
"It is obvious that the conflict spanning many years will not cease right after the agreements are reached which the UN special envoy worked out at the talks in Sweden," Nebenzya said speaking about the UN-sponsored deal on sealing Yemen's strategic port of Hodeida agreed in early December in Stockholm.
"We do not expect immediate results and keep working alongside Martin with the aim of implementing the agreements as soon as possible," the diplomat said.
"We approve of the efforts to boost UN presence in Yemen," he stressed. "We back the UN Secretary General’s initiative to set up a new mission facilitating the implementation of the Hodeida deal. We proceed from that fact that it will help in Martin Griffiths’s future mediatory work, including the organization of a new round of consultations."
Nebenzya pointed out that the parties to the conflict in Yemen "should be determined to reach compromise solutions to existing disagreements."
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing Hadi’s government back to power and crushing the country’s Houthi Ansarullah movement.
According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis.
The Saudi-led war has also taken a heavy toll on the country’s infrastructure, destroying hospitals, schools, and factories. The UN has already said that a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in dire need of food, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger.
According to the world body, Yemen is suffering from the most severe famine in more than 100 years.
A number of Western countries, the US and Britain in particular, are also accused of being complicit in the ongoing aggression as they supply the Riyadh regime with advanced weapons and military equipment as well as logistical and intelligence assistance.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
