The U.N. envoy to Yemen sought on Tuesday to persuade Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement to send representatives to peace talks in Kuwait as a shaky truce declared this month teetered near collapse, delegates said.
An advisor to the U.N. delegation in Kuwait said the Houthis had been "very positive" until two days ago and agreed with envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed on almost everything.
"They have since completely changed and this has caused a shock (to Ould Cheikh Ahmed)," the aide, who asked not to be identified, told Reuters. The envoy was now working with the Houthis and the Hadi-regime to iron out the problems.
Houthi negotiators have stayed put in the capital Sana’a, demanding a ceasefire begun on April 10 be fully observed before travelling for the talks with envoys from fugitive Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government in Kuwait.
The Houthis have also rejected a proposed agenda that stipulates they hand over heavy weapons and withdraw from areas they controls before a new government comprising all Yemeni forces is formed.
Any failure of the talks is likely to stoke intensified fighting between the Houthi revolutionaries and their ally, former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, on the one side and Hadi supporters, backed by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, on the other.
Residents in Marib reported intensified fighting in the province east of Sana’a after fresh troop reinforcements loyal to Hadi arrived on Monday after training in Saudi Arabia
HUMANITARIAN DISASTER
The United Nations says the Yemen war has killed more than 6,200 people and displaced millions of people in the poorest country in the Arabian Peninsula.
Al Qaeda and Islamic State have also exploited the war to widen their influence and gain more supporters in a country next door to Saudi Arabia, the world’s top oil exporter.
The Ansarullah complain that Hadi’s forces are trying to exploit the truce to try to make gains on the ground in several provinces, while warplanes from the Saudi-led alliance continued to fly over areas.
Teams of joint ceasefire monitors have been deployed in some areas, but the Houthis say they were still unable to curb continued violations of the truce.
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam, in a Facebook posting on Monday, said his group had long been ready for a dialogue to bring peace to Yemen and stability to the entire region.
"Unfortunately, and since the April 11 (ceasefire), aggression had not stopped," he said.
Abdul-Salam said that one of the committees set up to monitor the ceasefire in the northern al-Jawf province had had a lucky escape from an air strike by the Saudi-led coalition.
