Jan 15 (Reuters) – Yemen’s Saudi-backed presidential leadership council has accepted the resignation of Prime Minister Salem bin Breik and appointed Foreign Minister Shaya Mohsen Zindani as the country’s new prime minister, the state news agency Saba reported on Thursday.
Bin Breik formally submitted the resignation, which was approved by the council, before Zindani was named to form the next cabinet, Saba said.
Yemen has been a source of heightened tensions in recent months between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
A UAE-backed separatist group, the Southern Transitional Council, gained control of areas across southern and eastern Yemen in December, advancing to within reach of the Saudi border, which the kingdom considered a threat to its national security. Saudi-backed fighters have since largely retaken those areas.
Sharp differences over a range of other issues from geopolitics to oil output have also been a cause of friction between the two Gulf powers.
Saudi Arabia and the UAE had previously worked together in a coalition battling the Iran-backed Houthis in Yemen’s civil war, which brought on one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
(Reporting by Reuters; Editing by Chris Reese and Edmund Klamann)
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