ZURICH  – Switzerland has banned planemaker Pilatus from operating in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), saying on Wednesday the company had breached Swiss rules on giving logistical support to foreign armed forces now engaged in a war in Yemen.

The Swiss foreign ministry said it had gathered “sufficient evidence” that Pilatus failed to declare activities backing foreign militaries, as required by Swiss law, and added it has reported the shortcomings to the nation’s attorney general for further investigation.

The Swiss government has been investigating Pilatus for months. In 2017 the company signed a contract with Saudi Arabia to support a fleet of PC-21 turboprop planes operated by the Royal Saudi Air Force, according to the Stans-based firm’s annual report.

The Western-backed Sunni Muslim coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE intervened in Yemen in 2015, helping plunge the Middle Eastern country into a humanitarian crisis.

“Support services supplied by Pilatus Aircraft to the armed forces of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates… are incompatible with the federal government’s foreign policy objectives,” the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs (FDFA) said in a statement. “The FDFA has therefore called for these services to be discontinued.”

Privately held Pilatus now has 90 days to pull out of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the FDFA said, adding the company could still supply armed forces in Qatar and Jordan.

“Pilatus Aircraft Ltd will review the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs’ decision and provide a response in due course,” the company said.

Source: Reuters

SANA’A – The British government announced on Tuesday that it will not be granting any new licenses for arms exports to Bahrain as well as all other members of the Saudi-led coalition bombing Yemen.

The announcement comes after Britain’s Court of Appeal ruled that the process by which arms export licenses had been issued was unlawful.

The court ruling last Thursday followed a legal challenge by the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT), which accused the UK of breaching international humanitarian law.

Riyadh’s coalition, which has been bombing Yemen since March 2015, groups Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Egypt.

The military campaign has killed tens of thousands of people while many more have died as a result of starvation and disease.

The UK has licensed at least £4.7 billion worth of arms to Saudi Arabia since the start of the conflict.

Meanwhile, export licenses to Bahrain exceeded £56.6 million over the last three years, according to CAAT’s data.

Tuesday’s announcement, however, does not mean that all arms exports to these Persian Gulf monarchies are going to be halted.

The UK government explained that “extant licenses – those granted before this judgment – are not immediately affected by the Court Order.”

“Exporters may continue to export under extant licenses,” the government added in a statement.

SANA’A – The Palestinian cause will not be lost, as it has become today stronger than before, the official spokesman of Ansarullah Mohammed Abdul Salam said Tuesday, considering what emerged at the Bahrain conference of weak content does not deserve to hold a press encounter rather than a conference.

Commenting on the Bahrain workshop, Abdul Salam said that after the long preparation, overt and covert conspiracies, the Bahrain conference proved that Palestine can not be swallowed by “an adventurous investor,” or jumped by “a gambler politician”.

“Those who follow this ominous deal expose their weakness and betrayal to the cause of the Islamic and Arab nation before the world.”

“A cause as the Palestinian one, a capital as the Jerusalem and a holy land as Al-Aqsa Mosque, will not be lost,” he said.

The spokesman of Ansarullah ridiculed participants at the Manama workshop saying, “They stood up in front of Kuchner who gave them a lecture about the benefits of the deal of the century and after the end of the noise, it is a silly bribe does not deserve a press encounter rather than a conference.”

He stressed that the popular and political movement carried out by the free nation and resistance leaders everywhere in the world has a direct impact on the weakening of this deal and the distortion of all those who attended, sponsored or supported it. It as a betrayal of the most important issue in which most people of the region and the world believe in.

Abdul Salam pointed out that the plots of the enemy will not stop on Palestine and the axis of resistance, stressing that “we will not stop a moment to stand in the face of falsehood by all means.”

He praised the level of awareness of the peoples of the Arab and Islamic nation to face this deal. “The Zionist entity will remain an enemy of the nation and a grabber of part of its territory.”

Source: AhlulBayt News Agency