US President: Cooperative efforts by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Oman helped achieve truce in Yemen
US President: Cooperative efforts by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Oman helped achieve truce in Yemen
US President Joe Biden praised the announcement of the extension of the UN-brokered truce in Yemen for additional two months on Thursday, praising the regional diplomatic efforts by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, and Oman to achieve the truce.
“This truce also would not have been possible without cooperative diplomacy from across the region. Saudi Arabia demonstrated courageous leadership by taking initiatives early on to endorse and implement terms of the UN-led truce. Oman played a central role in hosting and facilitating dialogue. Egypt and Jordan opened their airports to flights from Yemen over the past month thereby enabling a key component of the truce process,” Biden said in a statement on Thursday.
He added that thousands of lives of Yemeni people were saved thanks to the truce since its declaration two months ago between the Iran-backed Houthis and the Saudi-led coalition.
“For the first time in seven years, Yemenis are able to fly from Sana’a to destinations outside Yemen. We have also seen additional fuel ships moving through the port of Hudaydah, helping ease Yemen’s fuel crisis,” he said.
UN Special Envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg on Thursday declared the extension of the truce for additional two months. The renewal of the truce came into effect on June 2 at 19:00 Yemen time.
“The truce is extended under the same terms as the original agreement, which first came into effect on 2 April 2022,” Grundberg said in a statement.
The decision came after international powers, led by the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations, exerted tremendous efforts to extend it.
The truce was the first nationwide ceasefire in the past six years of Yemen's civil war. Fighting broke out in 2014 when Houthi rebels, backed by Iran, seized the capital, Sanaa, forcing the internationally recognized government to flee. A Saudi-led coalition entered the war in early 2015 to try to restore the government to power.
