Houthis rebuff demand for Hodeidah withdrawal
RIMBO (SWEDEN): Yemen’s Houthi rebels will not hand over the key port of Hodeidah to the rival government, a rebel representative said on Friday, as the two parties met for Un-brokered talks in Sweden.
“This is not on the table,” Abdulmalik Al Ajri, a member of the rebel delegation told AFP after the Yemeni government said it was seeking a full Houthi withdrawal from the lashpoint port city.
The Iran-backed rebels, locked in a war with the President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and his allies in a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia, control the Red Sea city of Hodeidah, a conduit for 90 per cent of food imports.
The Saudi-led coalition has for months led an offensive to retake Hodeidah.
The battle has sparked fears for more than 150,000 civilians trapped in the city. Saudi Arabia and its allies accuse the rebels of smuggling arms from Iran through Hodeidah as well as the defunct Sanaa international airport.
UN Yemen envoy Martin Grifiths, who has pushed for months for the Yemen talks, urged both parties to spare Hodeidah as the talks opened on Thursday.
Ajri also rebuffed a government suggestion that the defunct Sanaa international airport be reopened as a hub for domestic lights.
“Sanaa airport is an international airport,” Ajri said, slamming governmentimposed restrictions on the airport as “arbitrary.”
Marwan Dammaj, Yemen’s minister of culture in the internationally recognised government of Hadi, told Reuters Sanaa airport should be re-opened to put “an end to the people’s suffering regarding transportation.”
“But it should be a domestic airport from where Yemenis can go to Aden and then leave to international destinations,” added Dammaj, a member of the government delegation.
Hamza Al Kamali, another member of the delegation, said airplanes must stop in airports in the southern city of Aden or Sayun, east of the capital, for inspection before leaving Yemen.
The airport was shut down in the aftermath of 2014, when the Houthis overran the capital and a string of Yemeni ports, triggering the intervention of the Saudi-led alliance on behalf of the embattled government the following year.
The Sweden talks, which opened on Thursday, are the irst meeting between the warring parties since 2016, when more thanthreemonthsofnegotiationsinkuwait failed to yield a breakthrough in the war.