UN envoy in Yemen to push rebels to withdraw from Hodeidah ports
SANAA: UN Special Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths arrived on Tuesday in the rebel-held capital Sanaa to push Houthis to withdraw from Hodeidah ports in line with Stockholm Agreement.
Griffiths was set to meet Abdulmalik Al Houthi, leader of Houthi group, the rebel-run Al Masirah TV reported.
Meanwhile, Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television cited a Yemeni government official as saying that the Houthi rebels halted the implementation of Stockholm peace deal.
This was Griffiths’ sixth trip to Sanaa in two months in his attempts to break a stalemate in the implementation of a ceasefire to withdraw warring forces and secure access to grain aid in the country’s Red Sea port city of Hodeidah.
Griffiths has been shuttling between the Houthi rebels in Sanaa and the exiled government in the Saudi capital of Riyadh to avert an all-out deadly fighting in Hodeidah, the lifeline of the country’s most commercial imports and humanitarian aid.
On Monday, Houthi spokesman Yahya Sarea said their militias will not withdraw until a date is specified for the withdrawal by Saudi-backed Yemeni government forces from around the port city.
“The first phase of the UN plan sets a date of our withdrawal only, while it didn’t specify any date for the withdrawal of the other side (government troops),” Sarea told Xinhua by phone, stipulating that the other side should also start to withdraw in the same time.
The warring parties reached a peace deal in Stockholm in December last year. They have largely held the cease-fire deal in Hodeidah but failed to withdraw their forces.
The deal seeks to save more than 20 million Yemenis from sliding into major starvation.
The Houthi rebels continue to fortify themselves inside the city while the government troops have been massing on the southern and eastern outskirts. The four-year-long civil war has killed more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, displaced 3 million others, and pushed the country to the brink of famine.