(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The UN Security Council was unable yesterday to agree on a Russian-drafted statement demanding an immediate ceasefire or at least humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Yemen.
Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin criticised the 15-member council, saying fellow envoys showed "amazing indecision" in the face of the worsening humanitarian situation in Yemen.
"If you cannot agree to a motherhood-and-apple-pie statement, what can you agree on? I don't understand," Churkin told reporters following the meeting.
Russia had requested the meeting after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned on Thursday that dire fuel shortages were threatening to bring all relief operations to a halt "within days."
Diplomats said the Russian statement was not rejected out of hand during the closed-door meeting but that the delegations needed time to consider the wording. "There was a strong degree of council agreement on the desperate humanitarian situation in Yemen and need to return to political talks, but no agreement in the room on the exact working of the statement," said a diplomat.
Russia's diplomacy has been greeted with some degree of suspicion given the country's close ties to Iran, which is supporting the Houthi rebels who have seized the capital Sana'a and forced Yemen's president into exile.
Top UN official Jeffrey Feltman told the council that the new UN envoy for Yemen will travel to the region next week for talks on advancing prospects for a return to peace negotiations, diplomats said.
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