Saudi kingdom welcomes Yemen’s national unity govt

Saudi Arabia on Monday congratulated Yemen for forming a national reconciliation government in line with the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) initiative signed in Riyadh recently.The comments came during the weekly Cabinet meeting chaired by Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah at Al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh. The council condemned the continuing aggressive acts of the Israeli authorities against the Palestinian people, including the recent series of raids carried out by Israeli aircraft on different areas of Gaza that led to the death and injury of dozens of Palestinian civilians, including children, women and elderly people. It also denounced Israel’s racist policy in Palestine, the Syrian Golan and South Lebanon including the hostile policies concerning Palestinian water resources.“The council welcomed the decisions of the international conference on Afghanistan held recently in Bonn, stressing the Kingdom's keenness on the unity and stability of Afghanistan,” Minister of Culture and Information Abdul Aziz Khoja said in a statement after the meeting. “The council hoped that the meetings of Arab foreign ministers and the ministerial committee on the Syrian crisis to be held in Cairo next week will end bloodshed and restore security and stability in that country,” Khoja said.Earlier King Abdullah briefed the council on discussions and consultations that took place last week with a number of world leaders, including the telephone call he received from President Barack Obama of the United States on the latest regional and international developments.The council welcomed the GCC approval for the formation of a regionwide police force and a permanent security committee of the ministries of interior of member states to protect vital installations, the minister said. The council also reiterated that the GCC is a single entity and that any threat to the security of any member state was a threat to the security of the bloc as a whole.Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources Ali Al-Naimi briefed the council on the results of the recent United Nations Convention on Climate Change in Durban, South Africa. In the conference the Kingdom won an award for presenting a program for promoting the culture of clean development, the minister said.The council approved the amendment to paragraph (IV) of the Council of Ministers' Resolution governing the revision of the amount of compensation awarded to officers, noncommissioned officers and military cadets in case of death or disability. The council approved the unified system to extend insurance protection to GCC citizens in military service outside their own countries but in another GCC state.The council approved the appointments of Abdul Qadir Basfar to the post of branch director general of the General Auditing Bureau in Makkah province, Ahmed Al-Saadi to the post of branch director general of the General Auditing Bureau in the Eastern Province, Muhammad Al-Ghaithi to the post of branch director general of the civil status at the Ministry of Interior, and Ibrahim Al-Najashi to the post of consulting civil engineer at the Ministry of Municipal and Rural Affairs.