Governor of Yemen’s Hodeidah province al-Hassan Taher accused on Thursday the Iran-backed Houthi militias of emptying the port city’s treasuries from cash and transferring the money to Sanaa.
The militias have continued to violate the province’s resources to fund their war effort, he told Asharq Al-Awsat
Separately, he said that the Yemeni government representatives in the Redeployment Committee should resume their meetings next week with Michael Lollesgaard, head of the UN Monitoring Committee on Hodeidah.
“They will discuss details related to the implementation of the second phase of the redeployment plan,” Taher said, adding that the team had already presented its remarks to the UN secretary general, but received no response.
This month, UN Special Envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths had announced that the legitimate government and Houthis have accepted a detailed redeployment plan in Hodeidah, and that his team was working on resolving the final outstanding issues related to the operational plans for phase two, redeployments and also the status of local security forces.
On April 17, Griffiths and Lollesgaard visited Riyadh and presented to Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi a new draft plan for the last arrangements in the province of Hodeidah.
At that time, Yemen's Minister of Culture, Marwan Damaj told Asharq Al-Awsat that the new UN plan “clearly legitimizes the Houthi presence in the port city.”
Government sources said the militias refuse to implement the plan and instead were maneuvering to win time and to continue to violate the truce.
Taher said it was unlikely that the Lollesgaard would hold meetings with both representatives of the legitimate government and Houthis.
“The militias have recently removed all valuables from Hodeidah in anticipation of the collapse of the UN efforts and resumption of military operations,” Taher explained.
