UN in Yemen contacts

SANAA, Nov 24, (Agencies): UN envoy Martin Griffiths met a Yemeni rebel leader in insurgent-held Sanaa on Saturday and is to follow up by holding talks in Riyadh with Yemen’s government in a drive to relaunch a peace process.

In a possible breakthrough despite scepticism on the government side, the envoy has said he has opened a dialogue with Houthi rebel officials on “how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace” in the key port city of Hodeida.

A UN source said Griffiths will hold talks on Monday in the Saudi capital, where Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi and other officials have taken up residence.

On Saturday, Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, head of the Houthi rebels’ Higher Revolutionary Committee, met in Sanaa with the UN envoy, an AFP photographer said.

“We hope that his (Griffiths’) visit to Riyadh ends with positive results,” Houthi told reporters after their talks.

Griffiths later flew out from Sanaa’s airport without making comments to reporters.

He arrived in the capital on Wednesday ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden in December between the Iran-aligned Shiite Houthi rebels and progovernment forces backed by a Saudi-led military coalition.

No date has yet been set for the negotiations.

The UN-recognised government had not yet received “any

information from UN envoy Martin Griffiths about the talks in Sweden and what is to be discussed”, Rajeh Badi, a government spokesman, said Friday.

“We are certain that the Houthi rebels have not yet taken a strategic and serious decision about peace,” he told

AFP.

“They (Houthis) will not let go of their weapons. They would tell us: ‘You’re dreaming if you think we’re going to disarm.’”

Griffiths, however, struck a positive note on Friday during his first to Hodeida.

“I am here to tell you today that we have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port,” he told reporters.

Griffiths urged Yemen’s warring parties to “keep the peace” in the rebelheld Red Sea port city, which serves as the entry point of nearly all imports and humanitarian aid into the impoverished country.

UN agencies say 14 million Yemenis are at risk of starvation and the closure of Hodeidah port would further exacerbate the humanitarian crisis.

Under heavy international pressure, the loyalists and their Saudi-led military backers have largely suspended a five-month offensive on Hodeida.

Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to Yemen’s four-year war.

The current peace push is the biggest since 2016.

In September, UN-led peace talks faltered when the Houthis refused to travel to Geneva, accusing the world body of failing to guarantee their delegation’s return to Sanaa or secure the evacuation of wounded rebels to Oman.

Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and left rebel delegates stranded in Oman for three months.

The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015, has killed nearly 10,000 people and left up to 22 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN figures.

Rights groups fear the actual death toll is far higher.

The Arab coalition joined the conflict to bolster Hadi a year after Houthi rebels captured Sanaa, triggering what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

The United Nations said on Friday it was ready to help supervise Yemen’s vital Hodeidah port to protect it from “potential destruction”, as its envoy met managers of the Houthi-held harbour.

Western countries are pressing for a ceasefire and renewed peace efforts to end the country’s three-year-old conflict amid fears that half the population, some 14 million people, could soon be on the brink of famine.

“We discussed ... how the United Nations can take a leading role in operating the port, we have to do this quickly through discussions with all the parties,” UN envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, said after his meetings.

“We think that by playing this role we would help preserve a lifeline to the

people in Yemen,” he said, according to an Arabic translation of his remarks which was supplied to local reporters.

UN spokesman Rheal LeBlanc told reporters earlier in Geneva that Griffiths had specific ideas about managing the port that he would present to the parties to the conflict.

The aim was to “protect the port itself from potential destruction, and preserve the main humanitarian pipeline to the people of Yemen,” LeBlanc said.

Griffiths arrived earlier in the day in Hodeidah, the latest focus of the war between the Houthi group, which controls the city, and pro-government forces backed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

The port is an important supply line to the Houthi-controlled capital Sanaa, located in mountains to the northeast of Hodeidah, and to much of the country.

Griffiths told the UN Security Council last week that Yemen’s warring sides had given “firm assurances” they were committed to attending peace talks he hopes to convene in Sweden in December.

LeBlanc said Griffiths wanted a halt to the recent escalation in fighting around Hodeidah in order to “create a conducive environment” for the Sweden consultations.

Griffiths visited Sanaa on Thursday to talk to Houthi leaders about their attendance in Sweden.

The Saudi-led, Western-backed coalition intervened in Yemen in March 2015 to restore the internationallyrecognised government ousted from Sanaa in 2014 by the Houthis.

The death toll from a conflict seen as a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran is big but unknown. In 2016 the United Nations said 10,000 civilians had been killed in the fighting itself.

An estimated 85,000 children under five may have starved to death in Yemen since 2015, Save the Children said on Thursday.

Almost half of Yemen’s children are chronically malnourished, which can stunt their growth, World Health Organisation spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters on Friday.

“Thousands of under-nourished people are dying of diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles,” he added.

The UN’s World Food Programme said that on Friday it completed food distribution to 180,000 people, or about 30,000 families, in Hodeidah city, reducing the danger they would have faced if they had to travel to get supplies.

Finland announced late on Thursday it will block new arms export licences to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, citing the murder of a Saudi journalist and the countries’ role in Yemen’s humanitarian crisis.

The suspension mirrors earlier decisions by Denmark, Norway and Germany to halt arms sales to Saudi Arabia for the time being over the killing and over the Kingdom’s part in Yemen’s war which has left 14 million people facing starvation, according to the UN.