WASHINGTON: Lawmakers have moved a bipartisan bill in the House of Representatives, expressing serious reservations over US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and support for the Saudi operation in Yemen.

The joint bill, moved by Democrat Ted Lieu and Republican Ted Yoho during the weekend, is a companion to a similar legislation moved in the Senate last month.

Both resolutions urge the US administration to stop supporting Saudi military operations in Yemen and limit arms supplies to the country until the Saudis take “all feasible precautions” to protect civilians and facilitate the flow of critical humanitarian aid to Yemen.

“The United States needs to send a clear message to Saudi Arabia: the continued civilian casualties in Yemen are completely unacceptable,” said Congressman Lieu in a statement issued by his office.

“The Saudis need to do everything in their power to eliminate the risk to innocent civilians in this conflict and until they do, the US should not be supporting their military actions there,” he added.

Congressman Yoho said President Barack Obama’s “piecemeal approach to the region is not working” and asked him to discontinue supplying high-tech military weapons to Saudi Arabia.

The resolution urges President Obama to certify to the congress that: Saudi Arabia is not providing funding, materiel support, or lethal aid to designated foreign terrorist organizations; the Saudi government and its coalition partners are taking all feasible precautions to reduce the risk of harm to civilians and civilian infrastructure in the course of military action; they are making demonstrable efforts to facilitate both humanitarian assistance and commercial goods; (iv) Saudi Arabia is taking all necessary measures to target designated foreign terrorist organizations, including Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and affiliates of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant as part of its military operations in Yemen.

A US-backed Saudi coalition has been bombing Yemen since March last year and, according to the UN, it is responsible for two-thirds of civilian casualties in the country. Human rights organisations, however, have accused both sides of committing war crimes.

Congressman Lieu has been publicly raising concerns over continued US support to this coalition. In March, he sent a letter to Secretary of State John Kerry and Defence Secretary Ashton Carter, asking for “an assessment as to whether the indiscriminate nature of the coalition’s operations and the targeting of civilians have significantly changed since October”.

In September, he sent another letter to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, saying that the US “cease aiding coalition air strikes in Yemen until the coalition demonstrates that they will institute proper safeguards to prevent civilian deaths”.

Congressman Yoho said that Saudi operations in Yemen allowed extremists to carve out a 340-mile territory on the country’s southern coast, where they now collects taxes.

“We must make sure that Saudi military action is actually targeting terrorist groups, protecting civilian populations [and] facilitating humanitarian aid in their military actions in Yemen,” Congressman Yoho said in his statement.

Published in Dawn, April 26th, 2016