Local Editor
The UN special envoy to Yemen has said that he is looking forward to "announcing the reopening of Sanaa airport next week" to commercial access two years after the devastating Saudi-led military campaign forced its closure.
Martin Griffiths told Al Jazeera late on Thursday he was also "working on resuming Yemen talks [between the warring sides] within weeks in Europe".
UN-brokered talks between the Houthis and the resigned Yemeni regime, which is militarily backed by Saudi Arabia and the UAE, was stalled earlier this month.
"I don't think we can allow it to be delayed until over the horizon because the problem with that is that people lose the narrative of peace and once you lose the opportunity to talk about the settlement, the narrative of war becomes dominant," he said. "That's what we must try to get away from."
He also said he wanted to make announcements "about how we can get prisoners released, [from] both sides".
"We made a lot of progress since Geneva and I want to work with the central bank of Yemen and their counterparts in Sanaa on payment of salaries which is crucial, by the way, for the humanitarian issues," he said.
The World Food Programme (WFP) said on Thursday there "very well could be" famine in remote areas of Yemen, underscoring the bleak humanitarian situation in the country.
The UN food agency has warned that Yemen, the poorest nation in the Middle East, is on the brink of a full-blown famine, with 18 million of its 29 million population food insecure.
Source: Al Jazeera, Edited by Website Team
