Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Command Council Abdullah al-Alimi confirmed that Yemen’s new leaders are “ready for war” if peace efforts with the Houthi militias fail, but stressed that ending the conflict, which has been going on for more than seven years, remains a priority, and Al- Alimi said Saturday night in his first media interview since his appointment to the eight-member body: “Our first option is peace, but we are ready for war.”
He said forces linked to the council are “capable of supporting a coalition” led by Saudi Arabia to achieve “complete victory” against the Houthis. The internationally recognized government of Hadi is waging a bitter war against the Iranian-backed Houthis, who have controlled the capital Sana’a and other areas in the north and west of the country since 2014.
Al-Alimi said: “The difficult conditions in which Yemen finds itself require that everyone go beyond personal and partisan interests in order to achieve peace.”
In the coming days, the council’s new leaders will meet in Yemen with UN envoy to Yemen Hans Grundberg, who visited Sana’a this week for the first time since his appointment in September last year and met with Houthi leaders.
Al-Alimi, a former director of Hadi’s office, explained that the council’s leaders would then move “inside Yemen to take the constitutional oath,” without specifying the exact location.
He did not say how long the new council would wait for the Houthis to sit down at the negotiating table. The Houthis refused to participate in the consultations in Riyadh, but Al-Alimi said: “If the Houthis are serious about dialogue … we will not disagree on the place of negotiations.”
