Yemen’s embattled president, in exile in Saudi Arabia, announced a Cabinet reshuffle Friday in a major step toward closing a dangerous rift between his internationally-recognised government and the Southern Transitional Council.
President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s decree said the incumbent prime minister, Maeen Abdulmalik Saeed, would keep his job while 24 ministerial posts would have almost equal representation of both northerners and southerners, according to the country’s state-run SABA news agency.
The reshuffle included women, for the first time since the 1990s.
Defence Minister Mohammed al-Maqdishi and Finance Minister Salem Saleh Bin Braik kept their jobs in the new government. Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak, who was Yemen’s ambassador to the US, was named foreign minister, replacing Mohammed Abdullah al-Hadrami.
Fighting resumed in southern Yemen between the Southern Transitional Council (STC) and the Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government of Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, officials said Wednesday. https://t.co/BXEqeEn4C3
— The Arab Weekly (@ArabWeekly) August 26, 2020
The UN special envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffiths, welcomed the reshuffle as “a pivotal step towards a lasting political resolution to the conflict in Yemen.”
Naming a new government was part of a power-sharing deal between Hadi and the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC), an umbrella group of militias seeking to restore an independent southern Yemen, which existed from 1967 until unification in 1990.
The secessionist group declared self-rule over the key port city of Aden and other southern provinces in April, before it abandoned its aspirations for self-rule late in July to implement the peace agreement with Hadi’s government.
The power-sharing deal, inked in the Saudi capital of Riyadh last year, was meant to end months of infighting between what are nominal allies in Yemen’s civil war that pits a Saudi-backed coalition against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels.
HRH Crown Prince: We would like to pay tribute to the response of Yemen's President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and the Southern Transitional Council to the Kingdom's call to play host for the dialogue.#KSA24 pic.twitter.com/Jid0n4KFa6
— KSA24EN موجز الإنجليزي (@KSA24EN) November 7, 2019
The deal also called for the appointment of a new governor and security director for the port city of Aden, the seat of Hadi’s government since the Houthis took over the capital, Sana’a in 2014. The following year, the Saudi-led coalition, determined to restore Hadi’s legitimate government to power, launched a military intervention.
The power-sharing deal also included the withdrawal of rival forces from Aden and the flashpoint southern province of Abyan. The Saudi-led coalition said that was completed earlier this week.
This article has been adapted from its original source.
