US President Donald Trump's decision to veto resolutions banning arms sales to Saudi Arabia will fuel the conflict in Yemen and will cost more innocent civilians to die, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel said in a statement
WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 25th July, 2019) US President Donald Trump's decision to veto resolutions banning arms sales to Saudi Arabia will fuel the conflict in Yemen and will cost more innocent civilians to die, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel said in a statement.
Earlier, Trump vetoed a handful of resolutions passed in bipartisan fashion last month by both chambers of Congress that prohibited weapons transfers to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and other countries in Europe due to concerns the munitions were being used to kill civilians in Yemen.
"This veto is going to cost innocent lives. These weapons are going to continue fueling a reckless and brutal campaign of violence... [while] exacerbating the world's worst humanitarian catastrophe," Engel said on Wednesday. "Whatever our security concerns in the region, there's no 'emergency,' as the Administration claimed, that justifies this end run around Congress."
The congressman also said he would use every tool at his disposal to close legal loopholes that led to this "arms sale fiasco" in the first place.
Trump, employing some interesting logic, told the Senate that he vetoed the resolutions because restricting the ability of US partners to produce and purchase precision-guided munitions "would likely prolong the conflict in Yemen and deepen the suffering it causes."
A UN human rights report released last year attributed most of the 16,000 civilian deaths in Yemen to Saudi-led coalition airstrikes on targets such as hospitals, schools and open-air markets. The report said that all parties to the conflict are likely responsible for war crimes.
The Saudi-led coalition has been carrying out airstrikes against the Houthis in Yemen at the request of President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi since 2015. The intense fighting has resulted in one of the world's most acute humanitarian crises, with about 22 million people in Yemen currently in need of assistance, according to UN figures.
