A member of the Presidential Leadership Council and President of the Southern Transitional Council, Aidaroos Al-Zubaidi, said that Riyadh’s recent talks with the delegation of the Houthi militia were preliminary, and that the Transitional Council will participate in later stages.

He added, in an interview with the American Associated Press: “We demand the return of the southern state with its full sovereignty, and this will happen by starting negotiations with the Houthis, and certainly the negotiations will be long, and this is the goal of our strategy for negotiations with them.”

Al-Zubaidi stressed that he welcomes the efforts of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia to settle the dispute in Yemen, explaining that the next priority is to establish a southern state, with the same borders that existed before the Yemeni unity in 1990, and that the people of the south are the ones who will ultimately decide and determine this matter.

 He said: “I am in New York, meters away from the United Nations headquarters, and we only ask for what is stated in accordance with the laws established by the United Nations and upon which it was founded. We have the right to return to the period before 1990.”