“Do not criticise Saudi Arabia” says Saudi FM to UN

MUNICH, GERMANY - FEBRUARY 12: Adel bin Ahmed Al-Jubeir (C), Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, arrives for the 2016 Munich Security Conference at the Bayerischer Hof hotel on February 12, 2016 in Munich, Germany. The aual event brings together govement representatives and security experts from across the globe and this year the conflict in Syria will be the main issue under discussion. (Photo by Leart Preiss/Getty Images)

SHAFAQNA – The Saudi kingdom can do no wrong … or so Riyadh is saying. With King Salman de facto out of action – the monarch was made to withdraw from public view after his illness made him a political liability – Mohammed bin Salman, the kingdom’s belligerent crown prince has played war games with more than just Yemen.

Ever since March 2015, Saudi Arabia has been hitting those war drums hard!

And while the kingdom has yet to build itself a real military, Riyadh has not shied away from confrontation, using asymmetrical weapons of war to carry its blows to the enemy (ies). Riyadh’s favourite tool: financial blackmail.

In less than two months, the kingdom has used its chequebook twice, to bring unruly allies to kneel. Once against Washington and the 9/11 law and now against the UN over Yemen’s war crimes.

Here is how Foreign Policy worded the UN capitulation – “Saudi Arabia threatened this week to break relations with the United Nations and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to its humanitarian relief and counter-terrorism programs to strong-arm the U.N. into removing Riyadh and its allies from a blacklist of groups that are accused of harming children in armed conflict.

The threat — which has not been previously reported — worked, and the U.N. subsequently dropped the Saudis from a rogues’ gallery of the world’s worst violators of children’s rights in conflict zones.”

Al-Saud Royals are angry … so angry in fact that they have threatened to form an anti-UN coalition to collapse its institutions and smite its officials.

Senior Saudi diplomats told top UN officials Riyadh would use its influence to convince other Arab govements and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation to sever ties with the United Nations, the officials said. The threats were issued in a series of exchanges between top Saudi officials in Riyadh, including Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir, according to UN-based officials. Riyadh was enraged after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon included the Saudi-led military coalition in Yemen on a list of countries, rebel movements, and terrorist organizations that killed, maimed, or otherwise abused children in conflict. The 40-page report — which was issued last week and primarily written by Leila Zerrougui, the UN chief’s special representative for children and armed conflict — claimed the coalition was responsible for about 60 percent of 1,953 child deaths and injuries in Yemen since last year.

In this brave new world we live in Saudi Arabia suffers no criticism.

By Catherine Shakdam for Shafaqna