Yemen

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Wednesday 19th December 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hunt]

In terms of visible, confidence-building measures on the ground, one of the most important things is to get money into the Yemen economy through the Central Bank of Yemen in order to strengthen its functioning, and to ensure that pensions and civil servants’ salaries are paid. That will bring spending power into the economy and is covered in the draft UN resolution. When it comes to the next steps, the basic issue is that the Houthis, who are around 15% of the population, recognise that they can only have a junior part in a Government of national unity, which has to be the next step, but they need to have confidence that they will be secure in being able to play that part. That is why it is going to be important to build up confidence over the next six weeks. They accept the principle, but they have to be confident that it will be delivered. Of course, given what has happened, there is a huge amount of mistrust.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the Foreign Secretary’s statement and the progress that has been made with the Stockholm talks. I also echo his praise for both Martin Griffiths and Mark Lowcock.

On ceasefire monitoring, the special envoy explicitly requested a robust UN regime, answerable to the UN Security Council. Can the Foreign Secretary assure the House that that is what is provided in the current text? On confidence building, one of the issues that would really secure greater confidence would be agreement on the reopening of Sana’a airport. Is that being considered in the next stage?

[Mr Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and his Select Committee on International Development for their sustained interest in Yemen; I also thank him for his personal commitment to making progress.

The monitoring mechanism is UN-authorised and will be reporting back to the UN. It is led by a Dutch general and the UN Secretary-General will be requested to report back weekly, so absolutely yes to that question. I raised the question of the airport with both delegations. We were hoping that we could get agreement to reopen Sana’a airport. There are essentially two international flights—I think to Egypt and Jordan—but the Government of Yemen wanted to insist that the international flights first went to Aden, which they control. The Houthis were reluctant to do that, so we were not able to reach an agreement, but it is very much the next step.