UN chief denies Saudi pressure over Yemen child-rights report

The UN chief has denied the Saudi-led coalition has put pressure on him over a draft UN report condemning Riyadh for its role in child deaths in Yemen.

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told Reuters on Sunday that the United Nations faces "no pressure" from the Saudi-led coalition, amid rising concern over civilian casualties from the alliance's air raids.

Guterres was on a visit to Kuwait - ahead of his trip to Israel and the Palestinian territories - when he claimed there was no pressure to change his decision about whether or not to return the Saudi-led coalition to a child rights blacklist annexed to the report.

The coalition was briefly added last year to the blacklist and then removed by then-UN chief Ban Ki-moon pending a review, amid allegations Riyadh put pressure on the former chief at the time.

Ban had accused Saudi Arabia of exerting "unacceptable" undue pressure after sources told Reuters that Riyadh threatened to cut its funding of UN programmes. Saudi Arabia denied threatening Ban.

Asked whether he faced any pressure from Saudi Arabia or the coalition it leads in Yemen's civil war - which has cost 10,000 lives - Guterres denied the claim. 

"We are not facing any pressure and we consider that no pressure would lead to anything, but we are not having any pressure," he said.

"There is a technical work being conducted, and in the end, that will be presented to me and I will take the decision according to what I will feel is the right thing to do."

The draft report on children and armed conflict - which still has to be approved by Guterres and is subject to change - blamed the Saudi-led coalition for more than 680 child casualties and three-quarters of the attacks on schools and hospitals in Yemen.

The coalition had been named on the blacklist last year after an earlier UN report blamed it for 60 percent of child deaths and injuries in Yemen in 2015.

On Friday, a coalition raid on Sanaa killed at least 12 people, including six children, an incident the coalition blamed on an unspecified technical error. The International Committee of the Red Cross called the deaths outrageous.

Yemen's war pits the internationally-recognised government - backed by Saudi Arabia and its allies - against the Houthi movement and former President Ali Abdullah Saleh.