Yemen’s southern separatists withdraw from Riyadh Agreement committees

The UAE-backed separatists in southern Yemen say they have pulled out of committees implementing a recent power-sharing agreement with Saudi-backed forces supporting the ex-Yemeni president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi.

Back in November, the two warring sides — the separatist so-called Southern Transitional Council (STC) and the Saudi backed militants — reached a deal through indirect talks to end months of infighting in the Yemeni port city of Aden and its surrounding areas. The deal is known as the Riyadh Agreement.

The two sides claimed that they wanted to form a new national cabinet and place all their forces under the control of a so-called internationally-recognized government.

Both the UAE-sponsored STC and the Saudi-backed militants serve the Riyadh-led military coalition and have been engaged, since March 2015, in a bloody war on Yemeni people aimed at reinstating the former president, who resigned in 2014 and later fled to the Saudi capital, and crushing the popular Ansarullah movement.

On Thursday, an unnamed STC spokesman told Reuters that the STC negotiating team had pulled out of joint committees working to implement the Riyadh Agreement, without mentioning the reason behind the withdrawal.

However, Salim al-Awlaqi, a member of the STC’s presidential council, tweeted that the decision had been made in protest against violence in Yemen’s Shabwa Province that separatists blamed on forces loyal to the Islah party, which is the backbone of Hadi’s so-called government.

SS