Yemen sides ‘agree to UN proposal for opening airport’
The warring sides in Yemen have reached an agreement on the UN’s proposal for reopening Sanaa airport, a member of the government delegation and Houthi member Abdel Al Hanash said late last night.
Reopening the airport in the rebel-held capital would allow the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid into the country.
The Houthis were due to hold a briefing on the agreement overnight.
The UN presented both parties with draft agreements on reopening the airport, a political framework and the status of Hodeidah city and its harbour, a UN spokeswoman said.
Reopening the airport is one of the main objectives of talks in the rural Swedish town of Rimbo.
UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres is expected to arrive in Sweden for today’s closing round of consultations.
A Yemeni government official told The National that the Houthi rebels were under international pressure to accept an agreement on the airport before Mr Guterres made his appearance.
Earlier attempts to reopen the airport have faltered because the Houthis rejected a demand by the government to inspect all flights leaving Sanaa at airports it controls in Aden and Sayoun – a condition officials say has not been waived.
“We held meetings today on the issue of Sanaa airport,” Othman Al Mujali, Yemen’s Minister of Agriculture, told The National earlier.
“There is some progress made on this issue.”
A member of the rebel delegation to the talks also confirmed that some progress had been made.
Rana Ghanem, a member of the Yemeni government’s delegation, said she “predicts that there will be an agreement on reopening Sanaa airport as a domestic airport”.
Ms Ghanem said the government was still demanding that all flights stop at a government-held airport for inspections before they flew in or out of Sanaa.
UN envoy Martin Griffiths said on Monday that “tangible agreements will be announced by the end of this round”.
Rebels and the government have so far agreed on a prisoner-exchange deal that they hope will be carried out next month.
The agreement over Sanaa’s airport may be the last deal brokered between the two sides before talks resume again early next year.
Meanwhile, no progress has been made on the issue of a ceasefire for Hodeidah city and its crucial port.
Draft proposals have been submitted to the delegations over the past week but none had been agreed to before last night.
The government says it will not accept an agreement unless rebels surrender their arms, withdraw from Hodeidah and hand over full and sole control over the port city.
“We have presented our proposal but the issue is not in our hands,” Mr Al Mujali said. “We have no authority over this case because the rebels are the ones who control Hodeidah.
“We proposed that government control is restored over all of Yemen and that we will be in control of all government institutions. This is what must, and will, happen.”
Meanwhile, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, an international group tracking Yemen’s civil war, said yesterday that the conflict killed more than 60,000 people since 2016. The figures do not include the last few months of 2014 when Yemen’s Houthi rebels captured the capital.
Explosives experts collect mines planted by Houthi rebels in positions around the key port city of Hodeidah in Yemen yesterday. A Saudi Arabia-backed project has cleared 22,952 mines and explosives from along Yemen’s Red Sea coastline. UN-sponsored peace talks between the Yemeni government and the rebels are ongoing in Sweden