UN ready to help run Hodeida port

Griffiths urges warring sides to ‘keep peace’ in vital Yemeni city

The United Nations said yesterday it was ready to help supervise Yemen’s vital Hodeida port to protect it from “potential destruction”, as its envoy met managers of the Al Houthi-held harbour.

“We discussed ... how the United Nations can take a leading role in operating the port, we have to do this quickly through discussions with all the parties,” UN envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths said after his meetings.

“We think that by playing this role we would help preserve a lifeline to the people in Yemen,” he said, according to an Arabic translation of his remarks which was supplied to local reporters.

UN spokesman Rheal LeBlanc told reporters earlier in Geneva that Griffiths had specific ideas about managing the port that he would present to the parties to the conflict.

Griffiths urged warring parties to “keep the peace” in Hodeida.

“The attention of the world is on Hodeida,” he said in a statement released as he made his first visit to the city. “Leaders from every country have called for us all to keep the peace in Hodeida.”

UN envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in the battleground Yemeni port city of Hodeida yesterday to press the warring sides to exercise restraint and “keep the peace” ahead of planned peace talks in December.

Griffiths’s visit aims to send a message to Al Houthis, who control the Red Sea city, and the government forces, who have been trying to liberate it, to keep a lid on hostilities in the run-up to the talks in Sweden, a UN source told AFP.

According to an AFP correspondent, clashes could be heard in the distance as the envoy visited the lifeline port from which nearly all the country’s imports and humanitarian aid pass.

Griffiths, who arrived in the militant-held capital Sana’a on Wednesday, has met militant chief Abdul Malik Al Houthi and addressed “what can facilitate new discussions in December”, militant spokesman Mohammad Abdul Salam said.

Abdul Salam said that included “procedures needed to transport injured and sick for treatment abroad and bring them back”, a key sticking point during a previous failed attempt at talks in September.

Both warring sides have expressed support for the envoy’s mission to hold discussions.

The UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Dr Anwar Mohammad Gargash, reiterated yesterday that the UAE was “committed” to peace talks. The UAE is a key player in the Saudi-led coalition,

“The best way forward towards a sustainable political process is to support the Sweden talks and the work of the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffith without prejudging these negotiations,” he said on Twitter.

Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi — whose UN-recognised government was pushed out of Sana’a by the militants in 2014 — has also said he supports the talks while vowing to “liberate” the city of Hodeida.

Despite a lull in fighting, Hodeida residents reached by telephone said yesterday Al Houthi militants have been bringing in reinforcements.

Dozens of families have fled Hodeida as the militants stationed snipers on top of peoples’ homes, according to residents and pro-government military officials.

The conflict in Yemen, which escalated when the Saudi-led alliance intervened in 2015 to restore the legitimate government, has killed thousands and left up to 22 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UN agencies.

Yemeni forces and their Saudi backers have largely suspended a five-month offensive on Hodeida. Humanitarian organisations are desperate to see the current peace push translate into a more permanent halt to the four-year war.