Yemen's PM Issues Ultimatum to Saudi-Led Coalition

In a statement carried by al-Masirah TV on Tuesday, Abdulaziz bin Habtour cautioned that Sana’a would contemplate an "appropriate response" to the aggressor regimes that have deprived the government of its revenues, according to PressTV.

"The countries involved in aggression are stubborn and believe that they are exerting popular pressure on us regarding salaries, however, we trust the awareness of our people in Sana’a and consider the appropriate response," he emphasized.

"We give the countries involved in aggression one last chance," echoing the sentiments of Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement leader, Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

Bin Habtour further noted that at present, all of the government's sources of revenue were under the control of the occupiers. He revealed that, in the past, 75 percent of Yemen’s budget revenues came from oil and gas, 15 percent from taxes and customs, with the remaining from grants and loans.

However, today, Hudaydah port serves as the sole source of income, accounting for only 10 percent of the entitled revenues, which is sufficient to cover half of the civil servants' salaries every three months, according to Habtour.

The prime minister also stressed that Yemen remains "in a state of war with the aggressor countries" despite efforts by Oman to revive talks aimed at extending a truce between Sana’a and the coalition.

The UN-brokered ceasefire, reached last year, is still largely in place despite its official expiration, effectively reducing clashes in recent months.

Hailing Oman's mediating role as "sincere," Bin Habtour acknowledged its limited impact and emphasized that the initiative to stop the war must come from the members of the Saudi-led coalition.

Saudi Arabia initiated a brutal war of aggression against Yemen in March 2015, with the assistance of regional allies and substantial shipments of advanced weaponry from the US and Western Europe. Western governments extended their political and logistical support to Riyadh in an unsuccessful attempt to reinstate Yemen's former Saudi-installed government.

The former Yemeni government’s president, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, resigned from the presidency in late 2014 and subsequently fled to Riyadh amid a political conflict with Ansarullah. In his absence, the movement has been managing Yemen's affairs.

The protracted conflict has resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of Yemenis and plunged the nation into the world's worst humanitarian crisis.