A group of Democratic senators in a letter to President Joe Biden called on the Saudis to push for an end to the siege of Yemen.
A group of Democratic senators is calling on President Joe Biden to take “immediate and decisive action” to end Saudi Arabia’s “blockade tactics” in Yemen that have prevented food, medicine, and other crucial supplies from reaching desperate and starving people there.
A Saudi failure to meet those demands should result in consequences, the senators wrote in a Wednesday letter to Biden that CNN has seen, “to include pending weapons sales, military cooperation, the provision of maintenance for warplanes and spare parts, as well as U.S.-Saudi ties more broadly.”
“Immediate and decisive action must be taken to end the ongoing blockade of fuel imports that is exacerbating the growing humanitarian crisis,” sixteen Democratic senators wrote in a letter led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts. “The United States has diplomatic and economic leverage to compel Saudi Arabia to end its callous blockade of Yemen and we must use it before more lives are needlessly lost.”
It was found that Saudi warships were preventing oil tankers from docking at the key Ansarallah-controlled Hudaydah port, including 14 vessels that had gained approval from a United Nations clearance mechanism to berth.
A handful of those tankers were given permission to dock at the port by Yemen’s internationally recognized government — which is backed by Saudi Arabia and its military — in a move that was praised by the US State Department. However, humanitarian agencies in Yemen told CNN last month that the fuel was nowhere near enough to deliver aid to millions of people in the country’s north.
The senators wrote that the block on the “importation of commercial fuel into northern Yemen needed by nearly two-thirds of the Yemeni population … has negatively impacted food transporters and processors, hospitals, schools, and businesses.”
A State Department spokesperson told CNN last month that “there is no blockade” of Hudaydah, saying that it “remains open and commercial imports of food and other commodities are moving through the port at normal or above-average rates, along with goods imported for humanitarian assistance purposes.” The spokesperson said that the US “does not support restrictions on the importation of essential goods into Yemen, including through Hudaydah port, by any party.”
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