United Kingdom did secret Saudi deal on human rights

The move came despite rising concern at the number of civilians killed in air strikes by the Saudi-led coalition and indiscriminate shelling by the Houthi rebels.

The Netherlands, backed by several Western countries, had drawn up a draft resolution instructing the UN’s High Commissioner for Human Rights to send experts to Yemen to investigate the allegations.

The Dutch resolution also called for the warring parties to allow access to humanitarian groups seeking to deliver aid and to the commercial import of goods like fuel that are needed to keep hospitals running.

Saudi-Iranian tensions over Yemen have continued to intensify, with the coalition saying this week that it had seized a boat 150 nautical miles off the Omani port of Salalah, loaded with weapons destined for Yemeni rebels.

Instead, the new resolution supports a decree, issued by the exiled Yemeni government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, appointing a national commission of inquiry.

Such death sentences were among the complaints raised two years ago, when the United Nations General Assembly elected Saudi Arabia to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

All too often, world leaders have tacitly accepted the human rights violations of the Saudi Arabian government in favor of glad-handing the gatekeepers of oil. The United Nations reported on Tuesday that 2,355 civilians had been killed over the last six months. The next day they attacked a wedding party in the southwest, killing another 131 civilians.

It called for the probe to focus on “abuse of human rights and violations of worldwide humanitarian law since September 2014”.

“The ministry might find it an opportunity”, the cable read, “to exchange support with the United Kingdom, where the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia would support the candidacy of the United Kingdom… in exchange for the support of the United Kingdom to the candidacy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia“.