US demands Yemen ceasefire

The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Saudi Arabia over the war in Yemen, demanding an immediate ceasefire and summoning all parties in the conflict to peace talks in Sweden within a month.

In some of the strongest language yet heard from Washington over the four-year war, James Mattis, the defence secretary, said that the US had been watching the conflict ‘‘for long enough’’ and could not sit back and allow it to go on.

‘‘We have got to move towards a peace effort here and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future,’’ he told the United States Institute of Peace. ‘‘We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.’’

Three hours later, Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, called on the Houthi rebels to end their strikes on Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and for the Saudi-led coalition to then stop bombing populated areas of Yemen. In a late-night statement, he laid out the terms of the peace talks previously proposed by Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy to Yemen.

‘‘Substantive consultations under the UN special envoy must commence this November in a third country to implement confidence-building measures to address the underlying issues of the conflict, the demilitarisation of borders, and the concentration of all large weapons under international observation,’’ Pompeo said.

‘‘It is time to end this conflict, replace conflict with compromise, and allow the Yemeni people to heal through peace and reconstruction.’’

The conflict pits predominantly Sunni government forces supported by Saudi Arabia and the UAE against Shia Houthi rebels backed by Iran.

The UN has warned that a looming famine, caused by the coalition’s air and naval blockade, is putting 14 million lives in jeopardy. It could be the worst famine in a century.

The UN says there have been more than 16,000 casualties since the coalition entered the conflict in 2015, the majority of them caused by coalition airstrikes. On Monday, the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, which is associated with Sussex University, estimated at least 56,000 had been killed.

Washington’s backing of a ceasefire surprised many. It was unclear whether Mattis’s announcement had been signed off by the administration before he spoke or whether Pompeo was responding to his disclosure.

A day earlier, Alistair Burt, the British minister for the Middle East, had argued against a truce, saying that it would be fruitless without a parallel political process.

Britain and the US both provide support to the Saudi-led coalition and are the world’s two main arms exporters to Riyadh.

‘‘We have got to move towards a peace effort here and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future. We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.’’ James Mattis, defence secretary