[ad_1]
Sinking into a leather upholstered chair in a government plane, Saudi Ambassador Mohammed al-Jaber embarked on a mission that he described as a mammoth mission: rebuilding Yemen while he is on the brink of disaster.
After a ruinous three-year conflict, the poorest country in the Arab world faces the twin-fold setback of an impending famine and economic crisis that has put Yemeni currency in a free fall, while states United States urgently call for a ceasefire.
Saudi Arabia has faced fierce international criticism for leading an intervention in Yemen in 2015 against Huthi rebels lined up with Iran. The murder of critic Jamal Khashoggi, recently committed, has put his bombing campaign under new control.
But Jaber, considered the most influential Arab diplomat engaged in Yemen, sought to change the discourse on another front: rebuilding the country torn apart by conflict.
"The development of Yemen can not wait for the Huthis to accept the peace talks," said Jaber, who was named ambassador in 2014, just days before the rebels invaded the capital.
The UN announced on Wednesday its intention to revive peace talks in Yemen "within one month", after the failure of a previous attempt in September when the rebels refused to go to Geneva, claiming that their working conditions had not been met.
Jaber, 48, spoke this week to AFP of a plane going to the informal capital Aden to oversee the arrival of a Saudi oil tanker whose first payment of petroleum products accounted for $ 60 million.
The fuel is intended for power plants in case of chronic power cuts.
While his collaborators were serving pastries, dates, and Arabic coffee, Jaber listed what he called "injection projects" funded by Saudi Arabia and related to the project. electricity, education and health care.
"Our goal in Yemen is not to control it," said the Riyadh-based envoy, saying the Saudi intervention was different from the invasion of Iraq by United States.
"It's a war of necessity, not a war of choice."
– Assassination of Khashoggi –
Saudi Arabia's image has been severely affected by its intervention in Yemen, as more and more civilians are reported by the UN, allegations of war crimes and warnings of impending famine triggered by conflict.
The kingdom has dismissed many claims as highly exaggerated.
But even the United States, a close ally who supports Saudi forces by refueling and selling weapons, has finally called for a ceasefire and peace talks in Yemen over the next 30 days. .
The murder of Khashoggi in the kingdom's consulate in Istanbul on October 2 aggravated the kingdom's situation.
Saudi Arabia first attributed its death to a fight in hand before accepting what the Turkish investigators have always said: he was killed in a premeditated murder.
"The Khashoggi affair has shed new light on Yemen because it raises doubts about the Saudi narrative," said Elisabeth Kendall, research fellow at Oxford University.
"If Saudi Arabia has lied about Khashoggi's fate, at least in the beginning, then his credibility for explaining the horrors of the war in Yemen is also in doubt."
But Jaber said the extrapolation of the Khashoggi case to criticize Saudi efforts in Yemen was unfair.
He added that images broadcast in international media about Yemeni children emaciated in starvation-like conditions "break my heart," but added that Saudi Arabia alone was not responsible.
The Huthis, he said, constitute an insurmountable enemy, repeatedly pushing back the efforts supported by the UN to revive the peace negotiations.
A veteran diplomat, Jaber has always sought to focus on development projects funded by Saudi Arabia, "suggesting an objective to change the form of speech on Yemen," said Adam Baron, expert from Yemen to the European Council of External Relations.
– 'Save from collapse & # 39; –
In Aden, guards in camouflage, armed with pistols attached to the thigh, took Jaber in an armored car, dragged by militiamen in vans that crisscrossed the streets full of tanks, Humvees and checkpoints.
At a meeting at the Prime Minister's Office, Yemeni bankers, businessmen and civil society representatives complained of corruption, unemployment at the time of the closure of enterprises and 39, a dysfunctional government apparatus.
Jaber took copious notes as they spoke, assuring them of progress.
"We are here to support Yemenis … until a state works," he said.
He then sat in the presidential palace at the top of a hill, chewing qat – a popular light stimulant in Yemen – with another group of government officials.
The palace – a group of colonial-era villas overlooking the azure Arabian Sea – was bristling with armed militia but had no president. Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, an internationally backed leader, is reported to be based in Saudi Arabia.
"Yemen has two parallel governments with a currency and an economy," Yemen's central bank governor Mohamad Zemam said at the meeting.
"We need peace efforts to unify the two."
Presenting to AFP a bank statement showing on his phone the recent deposit of $ 200 million from Saudi Arabia into the bank to support the riyal in free fall, he said that some men 's Business had little confidence in the fact that the government was solvent until it showed them this evidence.
The state of finance is such that, until the arrival of Saudi fuel aid, the presidential palace was paralyzed by several hours of daily power cuts, did it? he declares.
"We are trying to survive … and save our state from collapse," said Zemam, who took office in February.
Jaber said that Saudi support was not equal to a blank check.
"Our money is not for corrupt people, but for the Yemeni people," he said.
The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed Said Al-Jaber (C), arrives on October 29, 2018 in the port of Aden, in southern Yemen, to oversee the supply of fuel by Saudi Arabia. Arabia.
A security guard next to a ship moored in the port of Aden, southern Yemen, October 29, 2018
The Saudi ambassador to Yemen, Mohammed al-Jaber, takes a selfie with a Saudi guard aboard a plane as he heads for Aden on October 29, 2018.
Military helicopters fly over a ship when it arrives in Aden Harbor, southern Yemen, October 29, 2018
