Southern Transitional Council delegation in Riyadh announces dissolution amid dispute

A delegation from the Southern Transitional Council in Riyadh announced on Friday that the separatist group was dissolving, but members abroad and other officials rejected the declaration and said the announcement may not have been voluntary. The Southern Transitional Council, which has sought an independent state in Yemen’s south called South Arabia and has received substantial backing from the United Arab Emirates, sent a delegation to Riyadh for talks with the Saudi government.

Several members of that delegation have been largely unreachable since arriving in Saudi Arabia, and a senior council official in the United Arab Emirates wrote on X that the delegation had been coerced into announcing the dissolution. Saudi and Emirati officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment, the report said.

On television, delegate Abdulrahman al-Sebaihi read the dissolution from a piece of paper, and several delegation members later gave recorded interviews to Saudi state-controlled networks denouncing the council’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi; the delegates appeared exhausted and unshaven.

Mohammed al-Sahmi, a council representative in Britain, said the decision was not valid because it was made in Saudi Arabia without a full council vote.

Key Topics

World, Southern Transitional Council, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Aidarous Al-zubaidi