Iran, EU hold ‘productive’ consultations on Yemen

An Iranian delegation held a meeting with European officials on political and humanitarian situation in Yemen, which has been under Saudi Arabia attacks since 2015. EU political consultations on regional issues with Iran were hosted in Rome on Thursday, the European External Action Service (EEAS) said in a statement.

The meeting was chaired by EEAS Secretary General Helga Schmid and attended by France, Germany, Italy and the UK at the level of political directors. The Iranian delegation was led by Hossein Jaberi Ansari, deputy minister for foreign affairs.

Senior advisor to Iranian foreign minister Hossein Jaberi Ansari who is currently leading an Iranian delegation in talks with the four European states on Yemen crisis in Italy said that one of the regional policies of the Islamic Republic is to end crisis in Yemen.

After the meeting, the Iranian official told IRNA that the main goal of the talks was to find a way out of the current situation in the impoverished country.

“The Yemeni crisis has taken up terrible humanitarian dimensions, as we witness a widespread human catastrophe and the silent death of a nation,” he said.

The talks was the second edition of talks in this format after the meeting on the sidelines of the Munich Security Conference in February 2018. The discussions on the political and humanitarian situation in Yemen were productive.

The participants agreed to meet again in Brussels in the near future.

More than 14,000 people have been killed and tens of thousands have been injured in the Saudi-led war on Yemen, according to Press TV.

The war-torn country has lost much of its infrastructure due to ruthless airstrikes by Saudi Arabia over the past three years.

According to the United Nations, some 22 million of Yemen’s 25 million population need humanitarian assistance.

The Saudi aggression was launched in March 2015 in support of Yemen’s former Riyadh-friendly government and against the Houthi movement, which has been running state affairs in the absence of an effective administration.

The offensive has, however, achieved neither of its goals despite the spending of billions of petrodollars and the enlisting of Saudi Arabia’s regional and Western allies.