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Riyadh /Â AFP
Saudi Arabia is determined to prevent external “interference†in neighbouring war-torn Yemen, King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud said in an annual address on Wednesday.
He did not explicitly refer to the kingdom’s regional rival Iran but Saudi officials have accused Tehran and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah of aiding rebels in Yemen.
Since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has itself led an Arab coalition conducting air strikes against the Shiite Huthi rebels and providing other assistance to local forces in support of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
“We will not accept any interference in the internal affairs of Yemen,†King Salman said in an address opening a new session of the Shura Council, an appointed body which advises cabinet.
King Salman said his country will neither accept that Yemen “becomes a base or a point of passage for whatever state or party to menace the security or the stability of the kingdom and of the regionâ€.
The Saudi-led coalition intervened after Houthi rebels allied with elite members of security forces loyal to Yemen’s former president Ali Abdullah Saleh seized the capital Sanaa and overran other parts of the country.
The rebels have killed at least 110 civilians and soldiers in rocket fire and skirmishes along the Saudi frontier. They have also fired longer-range ballistic missiles over the border at
Saudi Arabia.
International investigators last month said they had found a suspected “weapons pipeline†from Iran through Somalia to Yemen.
British-based Conflict Armament Research, which is primarily funded by the European Union, analysed photographs of weapons including assault rifles and rocket launchers to draw its conclusions.
Tehran has repeatedly denied sending arms to Yemeni rebels.
‘Sometimes painful’ measures
King Salman’s son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 31, has had overall responsibility for the Yemen campaign as he holds the post of defence minister. King Salman underlined that Riyadh was open to a “political solution†in Yemen, whose security “is intrinsically linked to that of the kingdomâ€.
The Yemen war has killed more
than 7,000 people, about half of them civilians.