On Thursday, a top White Official said the US President Joe Biden will announce a halt to US support for the Saudi Arabian-led military campaign in Yemen. The White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan informed reporters that President Biden has planned to announce an end of American support for offensive operations in Yemen. Sullivan said the halt to offensive operations doesn’t extend to US military actions against the terrorist group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Biden will also name veteran diplomat Timothy Lenderking as his special envoy for Yemen. Point to be noted that at least 6-year long armed conflict has produced a humanitarian crisis and other issues in Yemen. Sullivan said the President will direct the US authorities to play a more active and engaged role in the diplomacy to bring an end to the conflict in Yemen.
It is noteworthy that the President is under pressure from the liberal wing of the Democratic Party to end US involvement in the Yemen conflict. The US Congressional Progressive Caucus needs to repeal old authorizations for the use of military force in Yemen and Afghanistan. It is still unclear what operations will be halted by Biden‘s directive. The US military stopped refueling for the Saudi-led coalition during the Trump administration. The current US support includes some intelligence sharing. Sullivan said President Biden is also freezing the Trump plan to pull some US troops out of Germany. He said the President will outline a new commitment to multilateralism in his speech. On Wednesday, the US President Biden made a phone call to the Chinese President Xi Jinping. It marked the first time the two leaders have spoken since Biden took office 3 weeks ago.
The White House has confirmed the US President Biden underscored his fundamental concerns about Beijing’s coercive and unfair economic practices, the crackdown in Hong Kong, human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and increasingly assertive actions in the region, including toward Taiwan. Both leaders discussed the coronavirus pandemic, global health security, climate change, and weapons proliferation. Biden also affirmed his priority to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific. He vowed in a recent interview with CBS that he will handle Xi and China very differently than former President Trump did. Biden said, “He doesn’t have, I don’t mean as a criticism, just a reality. He doesn’t have a democratic, ‘small d’ bone in his body. The question is, and I’ve said to him all along, that we need not have a conflict but there’s going to be extreme competition”.
