ANSD : UAE official asks Lebanon for response to Houthi visit

THU 25 - 4 - 2024

Date: Aug 20, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

UAE official asks Lebanon for response to Houthi visit

BEIRUT: A high-ranking Emirati official criticized Lebanon over the weekend for not committing to its dissociation policy, after Hezbollah Secretary-General Hasan Nasrallah met with a Houthi delegation in Beirut Saturday.

The UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash called on the Lebanese government to respond to the visit. “The Yemen crisis and its war are priorities that are intrinsically linked to the future security and stability of the Arabian Gulf. In this context, Lebanon cannot be a logistic or political station for the Houthis and ignore the fact that this would exacerbate the repercussions,” Gargash tweeted Sunday.

Despite several reports claiming that Hezbollah has been involved in the Yemeni war alongside the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, the party never officially declared its participation.

A statement from Hezbollah’s media office released a day after Nasrallah’s meeting said he and the Houthi delegation had discussed the situation in Yemen.

The statement said the delegation was headed by Houthi spokesperson Mohammad Abdel-Salam, while a Hezbollah source confirmed to the The Daily Star that the meeting was held Saturday.

Last Tuesday, Gargash took to Twitter to say that Lebanon has not been committing to its dissociation policy, following a speech by Nasrallah.

The Yemeni Embassy in Washington also reacted to Nasrallah’s meeting with the Houthi delegation, saying on its official Twitter account Saturday, “The #Houthis recent visit to #Hezbollah’s leader is yet another proof added to the overwhelming evidence of the destabilizing role of Hezbollah in #Yemen and its support to the Houthis. This came just a couple of weeks ahead of the upcoming round of the #UN peace talks in Geneva.”

The Yemeni government and the Houthis have been invited by the United Nations for peace talks in Geneva on Sept. 6.

Hezbollah’s rumored involvement in the Yemen war, which began in 2015, caused a major political crisis last year when Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri resigned from the premiership, a decision he later withdrew.

In the days that followed Hariri’s November resignation announcement, made from Saudi Arabia, he called on Hezbollah not to interfere in the internal affairs of countries in the region, particularly Yemen. Hariri rescinded his resignation in December 2017, after his government committed to a policy of dissociation from regional affairs.

The UAE is part of the Arab coalition fighting in Yemen to restore the internationally recognized government of Yemeni President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi.

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