“We consider any move that does not end the siege and aggression against Yemen as just a formality and do not pay any attention to it,” Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a council member said via Twitter Friday morning, Al-Masirah reported.
“We are not those who are deceived by statements no matter how they are expressed,” al-Houthi noted.
The comments came hours after US President Joe Biden announced an end to Washington’s support for Saudi-led aggression on Yemen, in a reversal of the Donald Trump administration’s foreign policy.
“This war has to end,” Biden said in his first foreign policy speech as president. “To underscore our commitment, we are ending all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arm sales.”
Riyadh, together with its allies chief among them being the United Arab Emirates (UAE), launched a war on Yemen in March 2015 with the aim of reinstalling Yemen’s former pro-Riyadh government and crushing the popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The war, which has also been accompanied by an all-out siege of Yemen, has killed more than 110,000 people and turned the impoverished Arab country into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
“We have spoken with both senior officials in the UAE and senior officials in Saudi Arabia,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said earlier on Thursday.
“We are pursuing a policy of no surprises when it comes to these types of actions, so they understand that this is happening, and they understand our reasoning and rationale.”
MR/PR