Yemen says won’t transfer oil revenues to Saudi bank

Mahdi al-Mashat, the head of Yemen’s Supreme Political Council, blamed the US for the hurdles created by Saudi Arabia in paying salaries of civil servants in the areas controlled by the Ansarullah movement, Yemen’s al-Masirah television network reported on Sunday.

“What the Saudis want is to loot our oil wealth, transfer it to the Saudi National Bank, and give charity money to our employees, something that is dismissed,” he said.

“God willing, we will try to pay the salaries in the future and we will win them back from the enemy.”

Mashat also urged Washington not to make enemies among more than 10 million Yemeni public sector workers by preventing the payment of their wages.

Earlier, Riyadh proposed to pay the salaries of Yemeni civil servants for one year in Saudi Riyals in exchange for the extension of a ceasefire and the resumption of Yemeni oil exports.

Yemen, however, wants to restore control over its own resources, saying the country’s oil revenues are enough to pay the salaries of all public sector workers.

Saudi Arabia, in collaboration with its Arab allies and with arms and logistics support from the US and other Western states, launched a devastating war on Yemen in March 2015. It also imposed the most severe siege on Yemen, weakening the country’s economy.

Riyadh sought to crush Ansarullah and reinstall the Riyadh-friendly regime of Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, but it failed to do achieve its objective.

The war, meanwhile, has killed hundreds of thousands of Yemenis and spawned the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.