Human Rights Advocates and US Senators to Trump :No Weapons to Saudi Arabia

Visiting Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on his first overseas trip, President Trump over the weekend signed a $110-billion package of weapons sales to the kingdom.

Activists warn that the weapons will be used in the Saudis’ proxy war in Yemen, where they have been accused of recklessly bombing hospitals, markets, homes and other infrastructure, and killing civilians.

“This deal has President Trump throwing gasoline on a house fire and locking the door on his way out,” Eric Ferrero, communications director of Amnesty International USA, said in a statement.
Dozens of US Senators also sent a powerful message to Saudi Arabia: they – unlike President Donald Trump – want to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia, a country that has repeatedly used US weapons in attacks that likely constitute war crimes. Forty-seven senators voted to block a US$510 million weapons deal, meaning it was only three votes short of passing.

Numbers like these in the Senate, historically reluctant to adopt measures that could potentially damage the US-Saudi alliance, show the tide is shifting.

The bipartisan resolution of disapproval, introduced by Senators Rand Paul, a Republican from Kentucky, and Chris Murphy and Al Franken, Democrats from Connecticut and Minnesota, highlights the sales of aircraft components and weapons used by the Saudi-led coalition in the war in Yemen. A similar bipartisan version was introduced in the House. If the resolution passed, it would have blocked the sale of precision-guided munitions – the first of potentially dozens of arms sales authorized by Trump.

Source : Websites