Saudi Arabia should not host Yemeni reconciliation talks due to its military interference with Yemen's affairs, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Ebrahim Rahimpour told Sputnik on Thursday.
Since late March, Saudi Arabia has been carrying out airstrikes in Yemen upon the request of ousted President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi amid clashes between Hadi loyalists and Houthi rebels.
"Saudi Arabia attacked Yemen and carries out mass airstrikes, and calls on Yemeni political powers to come to the Saudi capital and start a dialogue there. We think it's wrong," Rahimpour said after a meeting of foreign ministers of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) member states in Moscow.
He said that dialogue in Yemen was important but pointed out that Saudi Arabia should not have interfered in the Yemeni conflict and thus could not host reconciliation negotiations.
"We think it was a big mistake," Rahimpour said.
The deputy prime minister said that a ceasefire should be established first, stressing that people in Yemen were in need of humanitarian aid.
Only after that, Rahimpour said, all conflicting sides in Yemen should meet for talks on a neutral territory and make efforts to find common ground. He suggested Oman and Switzerland as two possible venues for the talks.
Earlier, in March, Saudi Arabia suggested its capital Riyadh as a venue for conducting talks between conflicting sides in Yemen, some two weeks before it launched the strike campaign.
The World Health Organization estimates that up to 2,000 have died and more than 8,000 have been wounded after the spring surge of violence in Yemen.