Yemen: Foreign Relations
Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs
Keith Vaz (Leicester East, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs when the next Friends of Yemen meeting will be held.
Alistair Burt (Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Afghanistan/South Asia, counter terrorism/proliferation, North America, Middle East and North Africa), Foreign and Commonwealth Office; North East Bedfordshire, Conservative)
The last Friends of Yemen meeting scheduled for March 2011 in Riyadh was rightly postponed at the request of the Government of Yemen, in light of the political impasse and violence on the streets. Our focus now is on helping Yemen achieve stability through a political transition in line with the Gulf Cooperation Council Initiative. Once this has been agreed and implementation has begun, I consider there will once again be a role for the group in assisting Yemen to restructure and reform to address its social, economic, security and development needs.