Local Editor
UN Special Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths left Yemen's capital Sana’a on Tuesday after a one-day visit to push for peace in the war-torn country.
Griffiths will head for Riyadh, the capital city of Saudi Arabia, to meet the resigned Yemeni regime of former President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, said an official at the UN mission in Sana’a on condition of anonymity.
It was Griffiths' fourth trip to Sana’a in two months in his attempts to break a stalemate in the implementation of Stockholm Agreement that focused on Yemen's Red sea port city of Hodeida, the lifeline of the country's most commercial imports and humanitarian aid.
During his Monday's visit, Griffiths warned that grain aid stored in the besieged Hodeida city to feed over three million people is "at risk of rotting," asking the rival parties to allow the UN team for urgently access to the mills to deliver the aid to the extremely needy.
He said the stores have been inaccessible for over five months and demanded the warring parties for not further delay.
The four-year civil war has pushed over 12 million people to the verge of starvation and created what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.
The warring parties reached a peace deal in Stockholm in December last year. They have largely held the cease-fire deal in Hodeida but failed to withdraw their forces.
The rebels continue to fortify themselves inside the city while the government troops have been massing in the southern and eastern outskirts.
Last week's negotiations led by Michael Anker Lollesgaard, head of the UN cease-fire monitor team in Hodeida, resulted in what the UN called a "preliminary deal," yet the warring parties showed disputes over it.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
