The Saudis have been collecting large amounts of US and UK weaponry, most likely just keeping them for the worst-case scenario.<\/p>\n
The\u00a0United Kingdom<\/a>\u00a0is keeping a close eye on the final use of weapons it sells to\u00a0Saudi Arabia<\/a>, according to a top diplomat.<\/p>\n Matthew Rycroft, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the\u00a0United Nations<\/a>, told reporters on Tuesday that the country has measures in place to ensure weapons are used correctly.<\/p>\n “The UK has extremely stringent measures in place to ensure that the end use of any and all weapons that the UK sells are appropriate, said Rycroft.<\/p>\n “We monitor that in relation to Saudi Arabia extremely attentively.”<\/p>\n The comments come after a UN report placed the Saudi Arabia-led military coalition on a blacklist of children’s rights violators for their actions in\u00a0Yemen<\/a>.<\/p>\n UN figures released on October 5 stated that the alliance was\u00a0responsible<\/a>\u00a0for causing death and injury to 683 children in 2016, including in attacks on schools and hospitals.<\/p>\n Speaking on Tuesday, Rycroft said he “commend the UN for engaging with Saudi Arabia in relation to the conflict in Yemen”.<\/p>\n Riyadh\u00a0rejected<\/a>\u00a0the report, describing the report’s figures as “inaccurate and misleading”.<\/p>\n In July, the high court in London ruled in a high-profile court case that the UK could continue to export weapons to Saudi Arabia, despite claims by campaigners that the arms were resulting in\u00a0human rights<\/a>\u00a0abuses.<\/p>\n Sales of weapons by the UK government to Saudi Arabia have been criticised by MPs and\u00a0NGOs<\/a>\u00a0since the conflict in Yemen began in 2015.<\/p>\n Opposition leader\u00a0Jeremy Corbyn<\/a>\u00a0has repeatedly urged the government to suspend the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n In an\u00a0exclusive interview<\/a>\u00a0with Al Jazeera in July, Corbyn said: “We have constantly condemned the use of these weapons by Saudi Arabia in Yemen, and called for the suspension of the arms sales to Saudi Arabia to show that we are wanting a peace process in Yemen, not an invasion by Saudi Arabia.”<\/p>\n Saudi Arabia is the UK’s biggest weapon’s client, purchasing $4bn worth of weapons from the country over the last two years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Saudis have been collecting large amounts of US and UK weaponry, most likely just keeping them for the worst-case scenario. The\u00a0United Kingdom\u00a0is keeping a close eye on the final use of weapons it sells to\u00a0Saudi Arabia, according to a top diplomat. Matthew Rycroft, the UK’s Permanent Representative to the\u00a0United Nations, told reporters on Tuesday that the country has measures… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":55,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/55"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=840"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":841,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840\/revisions\/841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Opposition at home<\/h2>\n