British minister urges implementation of Stockholm Agreement on Yemen during Gulf tour
LONDON: British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt will meet Yemeni government officials and Houthi leaders during a trip to the Gulf region to urge the immediate implementation of the UN-brokered Stockholm Agreement.Hunt visited Muscat on Friday where he signed a joint declaration on UK-Omani relations and met Houthi militia spokesman Mohamed Abdul Salem.He will also visit Saudi Arabia where he will address a global conference on patient safety, and the UAE.Hunt said his “aim is to build on the UN-backed agreement reached in Stockholm in December,” and that he will “urge all sides to accelerate the redeployments they agreed at Stockholm and ensure the flow of humanitarian relief.”British Ambassador to Yemen Michael Aron said Hunt’s tour is “very important,” and that progress should be made in the coming days.He told Arab News this week that the international community will react strongly if the Houthis put the peace process at risk.“It’s no coincidence that the number of people in need of aid, now at a staggering 24 million, has increased enormously since the Houthis took over parts of the country,” he said.In an interview with Asharq Al-Awsat published on Friday, Aron also praised the outcomes of the donor conference held for Yemen in Geneva, and said it was a great success for humanitarian relief.The ambassador added that the Geneva conference “showed that the international community cares about the humanitarian situation in Yemen.”The British ambassador said that the UN regaining access to a grains facility near Yemen’s Hodeidah port on Tuesday was a positive step.
