Yemen government says ready to restart peace talks
ADEN: Yemen’s government said on Thursday it was ready to restart peace talks with Ansar Allah fighters, as international pressure to end the years-long conflict intensifies.
The United Nations said a day earlier it aimed to relaunch the talks within a month, after a previous attempt collapsed in September when Ansar Allah refused to attend.
“The Republic of Yemen welcomes all efforts to restore peace,” a government statement carried by the state-run Saba news agency said.
“The government of Yemen is ready to immediately launch talks on the process of confidence-building, primarily the release of all detainees and prisoners, as well as those who have been abducted or subject to enforced disappearance,” it said.
The United States this week called for an immediate end to the hostilities in Yemen, where Washington backs a Saudi-led coalition fighting alongside the government against the Ansar Allah fighters.
In September, Ansar Allah refused to travel to Geneva for planned peace talks, accusing the UN of failing to guarantee their delegation’s return to the Yemeni capital Sanaa and to secure the evacuation of wounded fighters.
Previous talks broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait between the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and the Ansar Allah failed to yield a deal.
US Defence Secretary Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo this week called for an end to the Yemen war, including air strikes, in an implicit acknowledgement that the Saudi-led coalition was involved in the bombing of civilians.
Over 7 million children face famine threat: Over seven million children face a serious threat of famine in Yemen and ending the country’s war will not save all of them, the UN children’s agency said.
“Today, 1.8 million children under the age of five are facing acute malnutrition, and 400,000 are affected by severe acute malnutrition,” said Geert Cappelaere, regional director of UNICEF.
“More than half” of the 14 million people at serious risk of famine in the impoverished country are children, Cappelaere said late on Wednesday.
“Ending the war is not enough,” he said, referring to a more than three year conflict.
“What we need is to stop the war and (to create) a government mechanism that puts at the centre the people and children.
“The war is exacerbating the situation that was already bad before because of years of underdevelopment” in the Arab world’s poorest nation, Cappelaere said.
He welcomed a call by the UN on Wednesday to relaunch peace talks within a month.
He said efforts to come up with a solution in the next 30 days were “critical” to improving aid distribution and saving lives.
Cappelaere said that over 6,000 children have either been killed or sustained serious injuries since 2015.
“These are the numbers we have been able to verify, but we can safely assume that the number is higher, much higher,” he said.