Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Confusion Surrounding UN Position After Coalition is Removed From Offensive List | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page
Media ID: 55352335
Caption:

Days after the United Nations pledged to withdraw the Arab Coalition led by Saudi Arabia from its controversial list about children and conflicts and the declaration made by Saudi Arabia and its allies that they were determined to present their objection to the UN about the erroneous information, the Secretary General of the UN Ban Ki-moon made surprising statements talking about the existence of alleged threats to halt humanitarian aid so that the coalition is withdrawn from the list.

In the face of this confusion regarding the UN position, Saudi Arabia yesterday reiterated the words of Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United Nations Abdullah Al-Muallami denying the existence of any threats to cut funding for a number of United Nations programmes to pressurise the United Nations. At a press conference in New York, he said “We made a clarification. If Ban Ki-moon understands our clarification regarding the report that he presented as a threat, that is his problem. He is the one who worked hard to explain the details of the report”. Al-Muallami stressed that “Making threats is not in our nature or culture”.

Commenting on the report, Al-Muallami said in a separate statement that he made to Asharq Al-Awsat that “the report on children and armed conflict will not be discussed at the Security Council, and it has not been included in the list of its future meetings”. He also stressed that the coalition would not be re-added to the list.

Meanwhile, the UN envoy to Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh called on Yemeni parties participating in the ongoing peace consultations in Kuwait to make concessions and compromise on outstanding issues. The UN envoy warned against the collapse of the Yemeni economy, and said that failure to redress the economic situation will lead to disastrous results.