Iran Rejects Media Reports on US Message on Yemen Crisis

Rasa - The Iranian foreign ministry dismissed media reports claiming that Tehran has received a message from the US for talks on the crisis in the war-torn Yemen.

News ID: 423685

Date: 19 September 2016 - 00:54

RNA - "The Islamic Republic of Iran's foreign ministry has received no message on talks with the third parties on the crisis in Yemen and such reports are denied," Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qassemi said on Sunday.

Media reports had claimed earlier this month that on 12 August US Secretary of State John Kerry sent a message to the Iranian Embassy in Muscat (via the Omani government), suggesting that US-Russian-Iranian negotiations begin to determine the fate of the Yemen war, without any mention of Saudi Arabia.

According to the reports, Iran did not respond to the letters.

The Saudi military has been pounding Yemen since March 2015 to undermine Yemen’s Ansarullah movement and to restore power to the former fugitive President Mansour Hadi.

Over 10,800 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in Riyadh’s military aggression which lacks any international mandate.

The UN human rights office said in August that the Saudi military is using cluster bombs against residential areas in Yemen in violation of international law, blaming the Riyadh regime for most of the civilian casualties in its impoverished southern neighbor.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) criticized the United States in May for selling cluster munitions to Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom had used various types of US-made cluster munitions in its war against Yemen despite evidence of mounting civilian casualties.

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