Germany – AFP – 2/6/2015 – The United States is opposed to the Houthi militia’s creation of a “presidential council” in Yemen, a senior American official said Friday after top US diplomat John Kerry met with leaders from the Gulf Cooperation Council.
“No, we don’t agree with it, and they didn’t agree with it either,” the official told reporters, when asked what Washington thought after Yemen’s Shiite militia dissolved parliament and set up the so-called ’presidential council.’
There was deep concern at the meeting held on the sidelines of a security conference in Munich about the situation in Yemen and a “feeling that the international community needed to take a stronger position,” the official said, asking not to be named.
Kerry had urged the Gulf countries to step up their contacts with all the political sides in Yemen, after they spoke loudly about “the threat” to stability in the region from the power vacuum.
The events have clearly taken the United States by surprise. Asked what the desired outcome was, the official replied: “We don’t know yet”
The US was “just beginning conversations not just with the GCC, but with our other allies and in the UN.”
The US-backed president Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi has submitted his resignation “and we think he is determined to go through with that,” the official added.
Washington was also looking to Saudi Arabia to play a key role in trying to resolve the crisis, as they “have enormous leverage” in the region and through its financial support of Yemen.
Kerry met for 90 minutes with the foreign ministers and officials of Bahrain, Oman, Qatar, and the UAE, as well as the deputy foreign minister of Saudi Arabia.