LONDON: A meeting between a Houthi official and Iran’s Supreme Leader proves “in black and white” that the Yemeni militants are an Iranian proxy, a senior Emirati said Wednesday.

State TV showed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei praising the militants Tuesday, as he met the Houthi negotiator, Mohammed Abdul-Salam. Iran has long been accused of supporting the group, which sparked the war in 2014 when they seized the capital Sanaa.

Houthi relations with Iran are “clearer following their leadership’s meeting with Ayatollah Khamenei,” the UAE’s Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash said on Twitter. The relationship was “stated in black and white in their statement of fealty,” he added. “The Houthis are a proxy and that is the correct terminology.”

Iran’s support for the Houthis and supply of weapons is regarded as one of the key reasons the war in Yemen has lasted so long. An Arab coalition, which includes Saudi Arabia, is supporting troops loyal to the internationally recognized government against the Houthis.

The meeting in Tehran is the first time Khamenei has held talks with a senior Houthi representative, Reuters reported.

“I declare my support for the resistance of Yemen’s believing men and women … Yemen’s people… will establish a strong government,” Khamenei said.

Yemen’s government and the Arab coalition accuse the Houthis of collapsing previous UN-sponsored talks to find a political settlement to the conflict.

Saudi Arabia and its allies say Iran’s support of proxy militias in the region, including Hezbollah in Lebanon and groups in Iraq, is the main cause of instability in the region.

TUNIS: Tunisia’s electoral commission said on Wednesday it had approved 26 candidates including two women for next month’s presidential election and had rejected 71 other applicants. The Sept. 15 vote follows the death of Beji Caid Essebsi, the first president to be democratically elected in Tunisia after the popular uprising of 2011. Essebsi died last month at the age of 92. It will be the third free election in Tunisia since that uprising.
Among candidates approved for the presidential race are Prime Minister Youssef Chahed, former Premier Mehdi Jomaa, the vice president of the moderate Ennahda Movement, Abdel Fattah Mourou and Defense Minister Abdelkarim Zbidi.
Zbidi resigned from his post after submitting his candidacy to run for the presidential elections on Aug. 7.
Former Tunisian President Moncef Marzouki and Nabil Karoui, businessman and owner of the private channel Nessma TV, will also join the race.

Women candidates
The two women candidates approved are former Tourism Minister Salma Loumi and Abir Moussi, a staunch supporter of veteran leader Zine El-Abidine Ben Ali who was ousted in the 2011 uprising.
Tunisia’s president controls foreign and defense policy, governing alongside a prime minister chosen by Parliament who has authority over domestic affairs.
The Independent High Electoral Authority (ISIE) received 29 applications on Aug. 2 over the first five days from the beginning of the race and 11 applications on the sixth day.
Government spokesman Iyad Dahmani confirmed in a press statement that Chahed’s candidacy does not necessarily mean he must resign from his current post.
Dahmani pointed out that the premier will delegate his powers to a minister in the same government.

“It is impossible to form a government during this sensitive period, which is full of political deadlines,” he stressed.
The spokesman accused supporters of Chahed’s resignation of “attempting to overthrow the entire government and disrupt the presidential and parliamentary elections” in the country.
“Anyone who is seeking my resignation is in fact aiming to delay the elections and my resignation means the resignation of the government,” Chahed said.
Local political sources have indicated that Chahed will delegate Kamel Morjane, former head of the Initiative Party that has fully merged with Tahya Tounes.
They explained that his move aims at satisfying those who have disapproved the unified electoral lists, whose members will run in the parliamentary elections scheduled for Oct. 6.

BEIRUT: Clashes between regime loyalists and insurgents in rebel-held northwest Syria killed 59 combatants on Tuesday, a war monitor said.
Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS), an extremist group led by Syria’s former Al-Qaeda affiliate, has since January controlled most of Idlib province as well as parts of neighboring Hama, Aleppo and Latakia provinces.
Several other armed rebel groups also operate in the region.
Fighting in southern Idlib and rural Latakia on Tuesday claimed the lives of 29 pro-government forces as well as 30 extremists and allied rebels, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
It came as regime warplanes pummelled the Idlib region with air strikes, killing three civilians in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, the Britain-based monitor added.
Regime forces and anti-government fighters have been caught in fierce battles in the region for days, as the former presses with an advance toward a strip straddling the Hama and Idlib governorates.
On Sunday, regime forces seized the town of Al-Habeet in Idlib’s southern countryside, in their first major ground advance in the province since an escalation on the extremist-dominated enclave more than three months ago.
The region was supposed to be protected from a massive government offensive by a Turkish-Russian buffer zone deal struck last September.
But it has come under increasing bombardment by Damascus and its backer Moscow since the end of April that has killed 816 civilians, according to the Observatory.
The violence has also pushed 400,000 people from their homes, according to the United Nations.
Syria’s conflict has killed a total of more than 370,000 people and displaced millions since it started with the brutal repression of anti-government protests in 2011.

JERUSALEM: Israel has deported a Filipino migrant worker and her Israeli-born teenage son after 11th hour legal appeals failed, a children’s rights group and authorities said Tuesday.
She is among some 600 workers from the Philippines who activists say could face deportation over a loss of residency status.
They include those who breached the conditions of their residency by starting families in the country.
The families and supporters say deporting the children to a country which they have never seen and whose languages they do not speak is a cruel policy.
Rosemarie Perez was arrested by immigration officials along with her 13-year-old son Rohan last week for remaining in the country illegally.
They had been taken to Ben-Gurion airport near Tel Aviv on Sunday night after an appeals court upheld their deportation, Beth Franco of the United Children of Israel (UCI) association said.
But they were taken off the plane after their lawyer requested an urgent hearing on their status in a bid to have them remain in Israel.
On Monday evening, they were escorted to Ben-Gurion airport where they were put on a flight to Bangkok for onward connection to Manila, Franco said.
Israel’s immigration authority confirmed in a statement they had been deported, adding Perez had been in the country illegally for 12 years and that all court appeals had been exhausted.
Last week, migrants, their children and Israeli supporters held a protest in Tel Aviv against the policy of deporting Israeli-born children of migrants.
Many of the 28,000 — largely Christian — Filipinos in Israel arrived to work as caregivers and home help, but according to UCI, some 600 families could now face expulsion.
Their visas were conditioned on the requirement that they do not start a family in the country apart from certain exceptions, the association says.
The issue has particular resonance in Israel, where there are long-term fears about maintaining a Jewish majority in the country which was founded as a national homeland for Jews.

DUBAI: The Yemeni army’s continued push has provoked the Houthi militia into spreading misleading messages via their media, the Arab coalition’s spokesman said.

Col. Turki Al-Maliki said the militia falsified events, claiming victories where none had been achieved to preserve morale among their troops.

Meanwhile Houthis continue to deceive Yemeni tribes to offer their children to fight alongside the militia, Al-Maliki said.

In December 2018, a senior Houthi military official told the Associated Press that the militia had recruited 18,000 child soldiers into their army since the beginning of the war in 2014.   

British tabloid The Mirror reported in May that children were being handed keys for “entering paradise.”

The recruiting of child soldiers breaches international law.