Yemen intervention will continue until govt restored: Saudi minister

Saudi Arabia backs rebel forces fighting Assad and insists he must leave office for the country’s conflict to be resolved. It is the first American factory in Cuba in more than half a century.

Saudi Arabia is still ready to support the US-led coalition against Isis with special forces on the ground, he said before angrily rejecting similarities between the terrorist group and his country’s own Wahhabist ideology.

CUBA: Pope Francis met with the Patriarch Kiril of the Russian Orthodox Church in Havana, marking the first time the heads of these two Christian branches have met since the Great Schism in the year 1054.

He went on to say that it’s “a decision that the worldwide coalition will have to make”.

“In the long term, it will be a Syria without Bashar Assad”, Mr al-Jubeir added.

Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo (C) and Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir (R) sign documents at a meeting of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS), in Rome, Italy, February 2, 2016. Jubeir said providing them with the rockets would “enable the moderate opposition to neutralise the regime’s helicopters and planes”.

“A very, very small part of our total military is involved in Yemen and it is not bogged down”, the soft-spoken Jubeir said.

Earlier, Saudi Arabia announced its intention to participate in ground-based operations in Syria.

The kingdom is in a battle for market share with USA shale oil producers and, as the largest member of OPEC, has refused to cut output despite a fall of about 70 percent in global crude prices since mid-2014.

The weaker than expected jobs data which showed unemployment boosting to 6.0 percent didn’t extend into the overnight trade, with momentum remaining slightly positive, Westpac senior market strategist Imre Speizer said.

Iran said they may come to the table for discussions, but now Saudi Arabia is playing hardball.