Local Editor

The United Nations [UN’s Deputy Secretary General Jan Eliasson said on Thursday that the world body has been engaged in talks to end the blockade that Saudi Arabia has imposed on impoverished Yemen.

The official made the comments during a news conference in Switzerland’s Geneva on Thursday, adding that the talks are aimed at opening more ports in Yemen to allow in fuel and other supplies.

He did not specify, however, what individuals, groups or governments the UN has been in talks with over the Saudi blockade.

Yemen has been under military airstrikes by Saudi Arabia on a daily basis since March 26. The attacks are supposedly meant to undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement and restore power to fugitive former Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

For nearly six months, Saudi warships have enforced a strict naval blockade on Yemen. The blockade has hampered aid shipments to the country, which imports 90 percent of its food.

Eliasson expressed hope that the UN-brokered peace talks to end the crisis in Yemen would start by the end of October, while calling on both the Houthi Ansarullah movement and the representatives of Hadi to participate in the negotiations without pre-conditions.

Yemen’s SABA news agency earlier this month [October] quoted Ansarullah spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam as saying that the movement will agree to a seven-point peace plan proposed by the UN, which also requires adherence to UN Resolution 2216, if other parties to the conflict also commit to the initiative.

Yemen’s General People’s Congress [GPC], the party of former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, has meanwhile also accepted the peace plan.

On March 26, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies backed by the United States began to launch a military aggression against Yemen by launching air strikes against the country in an attempt to restore power to the fugitive former Yemeni President, Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi, a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

The airstrikes have not been authorized by the UN.

The ’civilian’ death toll in Yemen has risen to more than 2,300 with more than 4,000 other civilians wounded in the fighting in the country that has raged for more than a year now, according to the UN recently last month [September]. Yet, other organizations put the death toll at much higher.