Yemen says it will work with Biden to end Saudi war

SANAA, YEMEN — Yemen’s foreign minister said his government will work with President Joe Biden’s administration to end the war in the Arab world’s poorest country.

Still, Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak insisted the country’s Houthi rebels and their Iranian backers remain the main obstacle to peace — an apparent defence of Saudi military involvement in Yemen.

On Thursday, Biden announced the U.S. was ending support for the grinding Saudi-led war in Yemen. The five-year conflict has killed some 130,000 people, including over 13,000 civilians, and resulted in the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. “We will deal positively with the attitude of the new U.S. administration, which wants to end the conflict in Yemen,” Bin Mubarak said late Thursday.

“This has always been our goal since the war started, and we dealt positively with all UN initiatives in the past, but we are always faced with the intransigence of Houthi militias and Iran’s agenda in the region,” he said.

Houthi spokesperson Mohamed Abdel Salam tweeted late Thursday that peace would not be achieved until “the aggression was brought to a halt and the siege was lifted.”

Yemen’s war began in September 2014, when the Houthis seized the capital, Sanaa, and began a march south to seize the entire country. Saudi Arabia, along with the United Arab Emirates and other countries, entered the war alongside Yemen’s internationally recognized government in March 2015. Biden announced an end to “relevant” U.S. arms sales, but gave no immediate details on what that would mean.