Will it establish a southern dialogue for the success of the Riyadh agreement ... Southerners have divergent views on the Hadi and Zubaidi meeting
English - Saturday 24 October 2020 الساعة 08:18 pm
Aden, NewsYemen, Exclusive:
Southerners have divided opinions on the importance of the meeting that brought together Yemeni President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and the head of the Southern Transitional Council, Major General Aidaroos Qasim al-Zubaidi, on Thursday evening, in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Politicians believe that the importance of this meeting lies in the fact that it came at a time when the Riyadh agreement is in a state of stalemate, after the annual anniversary of its signing on the fifth of November 2019, especially with the delay in announcing the formation of the new government consisting of 24 ministers.
The Yemenis are awaiting the issuance of the decision to form the government, which comes within the terms of the Riyadh Agreement, which aims to end the disputes and problems in the southern and liberated governorates and unify efforts towards confronting the Houthi militia, Iran's arm in Yemen, and liberating the rest of the northern provinces.
The southern politician, Ahmed Al-Rubezi, confirmed in his tweet on Twitter that many observers expect that the meeting will move stagnant waters and accelerate the implementation of the mechanism of the Riyadh Agreement, the most important of which is the announcement of the formation of the government.
At the same time, the meeting considered "an important step in the return of southern cohesion."
This opinion is agreed upon by the engineer, Masoud Ahmed Zain, the southern politician who believes that it is a great positive sign that the channels of communication are opened directly between the decision-makers regarding the south and at the highest level regardless of the details of what happened in the first meeting.
He said in a Facebook post, that a step like this deserves to be encouraged by both parties at the lower levels of leadership, and that it is not a one and only step, but rather a systematic approach to continuing consultation, dialogue and communication to solve the many complications between the southern parties.
Zain does not consider the details of forming the government an important goal, but adopting a direct dialogue approach between the southern actors without mediator or influence from a non-southern third party is the most important goal, because communication will greatly reduce the intensity of the conflict and open to gradually resolving issues of conflict according to the surrounding objective circumstances. Thus, it will lead us to a good result, which is to reduce the chances that the south will be a theater of war at this stage.
However, the head of the Aden Center for Strategic Research and Statistics, Hussein Hanashi, played down the importance of this meeting, which he said does not extend beyond the social dimension only.
He said in a Facebook post, "Whoever expects that this meeting will produce something useful on the (political level) between two projects represented by the two men, a northern unitary project and an independent southern project, is (either an illusion, a dreamer, or an unaware)!"
"Do you think, for example, that Aidaroos will come out to say that Hadi has finally abandoned the northern project and became southern liberation and independence? Or do you think that Hadi will go out to say that Aidarous has become a solid unitary and abandoned the southern project?"
He added "This will not happen, and Hadi will continue as he was, and Aidaroos as he was, carrying two quarrelsome projects at the political level.
No one in the universe can change one of them, and neither of them will change except with the defeat of his project. This is the truth!"
Hanashi believes that the Saudis, as the sponsors of the agreement, may be forced to bring the two men together after the Riyadh agreement reached a complete blockage in a bet that the two men can do something to get the kingdom out of its predicament and both will agree under pressure, but the truth is that this will not change the reality of anything, no one will give up on his project!
