US to halt planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia over Yemen airstrikes

December14|Yamanyoon

The US is preparing to halt planned arms sales to Saudi Arabia because of the high death toll among civilians in the kingdom’s bombing campaign in Yemen.

Obama administration officials were quoted on Reuters, who broke the story, saying that the “systematic, endemic problems in Saudi Arabia’s targeting drove the US decision to halt a future weapons sale involving precision-guided munitions”.

“We’ve decided not to move forward with some foreign military sales cases for air-dropped munitions, PGMs (precision-guided munitions),” a US official said.

“That’s obviously a direct reflection of the concerns that we have about Saudi strikes that have resulted in civilian casualties.”

A second official confirmed the decision to suspend the sale of certain weaponry.

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The US move would leave the UK exposed diplomatically and faced with an awkward dilemma because of the scale of its arms sales to the kingdom and the presence of UK military personnel at the Saudi headquarters from where the bombing campaign is being conducted.

Andrew Smith of the UK-based Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT) said: “Like the US, the UK has licensed billions of pounds worth of arms to Saudi forces. Like their US counterparts, UK arms companies have fuelled and profited from the destruction taking place. If even the US is questioning its support for Saudi Arabia, then why is the UK government pulling out all stops to support them? Why are human rights regarded as less important than arms company profits?”

Source|The Guardian