Local Editor
Oman is mediating between Fugitive Yemeni President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's regime and the Houthi Ansarullah movement over a UN plan to resume peace talks in the war-torn country, a Yemeni regime official said on Tuesday.
Yemen has been torn by two years of war, which has killed over 12,000 people, displaced more than three million and ruined the country's infrastructure. The war, which was initiated by a Saudi-led Arab coalition, has shown little sign of ending.
The war has been exploited by al Qaeda and the Islamic State group to widen their influence in the impoverished country, prompting repeated U.S. air strikes against militants.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Foreign Minister of the Hadi regime, Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi, was in Muscat at Oman's invitation to discuss ways to bridge differences with the Houthis, who control the capital Sanaa with their allies, over plans presented by the UN special envoy to Yemen last week.
The plans, presented by UN Special Envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed during a regional tour last week, included confidence building measures such as turning over the Red Sea port of Hodeida to a neutral party, opening Sana’a airport for civilian traffic and paying civil servants' salaries.
UN aid chief Stephen O'Brien warned on Tuesday that any attempt to extend the war to the strategic port city would "directly and irrevocably drive the Yemeni population further into starvation and famine".
The Omani side has conveyed to Mekhlafi the Houthis' willingness to accept this plan but also its insistence that civil servants' salaries be paid first.
"The differences regarding Hodeida now center on the identity of the neutral party which will manage the port," the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
