Jeremy Corbyn’s Minister for Peace Calls for Arms Embargo on Saudi Coalition against Yemen

“We should not be selling weapons to any state that uses, or could potentially use, weapons we supply for internal repression or for foreign wars,” said Fabian Hamilton MP in his first major interview since he was appointed shadow minister for peace and the Middle East last year, Middle East Monitor reported.

Hamilton said that the Labour leader’s recent calls to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia over its bombardment of Yemen would be widened to include all nations involved in the bloody conflict.

It would be the first move by a future Labour government that would overhaul the arms sales regime to ensure exports would only be made to “states with a long history of using weapons solely for defensive purposes”.

On the sales of arms to the Saudi-led coalition engaged in the bombardment of Yemen, he said: “I don’t believe we have any business providing weapons of war for proxy wars.”

When asked if this would mean an embargo on the UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, and Eygpt, he responded: “Absolutely.”

The Middle East is a key market for the UK’s $9.3bn a year arms industry, which has sold almost $5.3bn of arms to Saudi Arabia since it began its bombing campaign in Yemen.

Last month, the defence secretary, Michael Fallon signed a new military deal with the kingdom, in a sign of deepening relations.

More than 15,000 people of civilians have died in the Yemen conflict, with Saudi-led coalition air strikes continuing to be the “leading cause” of civilian deaths, including child deaths, according to the UN.

Famine is threatening a quarter of the now blockaded country and amid the bombing, the International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that the number of cholera suspected cases could surpass one million by the end of the year.

Half a million children under the age of five are severely malnourished, and at least 2,135 people, most of them children, have died of cholera in the past six months