An adviser to the Yemeni information minister, Mukhtar al-Rahbi, has criticized the Saudi-led coalition for its failure to fulfill a comprehensive ceasefire in Yemen after the seizure of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) hover the Socotra Island, which is a part of the country's south
MOSCOW/DOHA (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd June, 2020) An adviser to the Yemeni information minister, Mukhtar al-Rahbi, has criticized the Saudi-led coalition for its failure to fulfill a comprehensive ceasefire in Yemen after the seizure of the Southern Transitional Council (STC) hover the Socotra Island, which is a part of the country's south.
Late on Monday, Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed Al-Jaber, said that the country's government and the STC had agreed on a ceasefire and committed to implementing the November peace treaty aimed at putting an end to military confrontation. Apart from other things, the Riyadh agreement envisioned that the secessionists should return military facilities and state institutions, which they had seized in Yemen's south, to the country's legitimate authorities. After two months since the deal's signing, the STC withdrew from it and declared self-governance in parts of the country's south in April, after accusing the government of failing to implement the deal.
"The coalition each time reminds of the implementation of the Riyadh agreement that they failed to fulfill any of its paragraphs after the seizure of another province. Such behavior no longer tricks us, the vision and intents have become clear. ... We saw none of your [coalition] efforts in Socotra that fell in front of a thousand Saudi soldiers," al-Rahbi wrote on Twitter late on Monday.
The coalition will continue to urge the warring parties to comply with the Riyadh peace deal until all of the country's southern provinces fall under the control of the separatists when the implementation of the agreement becomes impossible, the adviser added.
Yemen has been facing an armed conflict between the government forces, headed by Saudi-allied President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, and the Houthi rebel movement for several years now. The situation has been complicated by the STC, which seeks to secede from Yemen.
On Thursday, the Saudi forces that support the Yemeni army reportedly left strongholds in the vicinity of Socotra's provincial capital of Hadiboh and placed them under the control of the STC. In the wake of this step, the STC announced that it has established complete control over Socotra. In response, the Yemeni government slammed the island's seizure as "a full-blown coup that undermined the state's institutions" in the province of Hadiboh.
