Yemen talks delayed by Houthi refusal to appear
UN special envoy Martin Griffiths yesterday postponed talks with parties in the Yemeni war after admitting it had not been possible to persuade the Iranbacked Houthi rebels to go to Geneva.
Mr Griffiths said the failure to hold the talks was not a fundamental block to the peace process and did not signify a deadlock.
He said it merely delayed the formal start and progress had been made.
“The important aspect of the past three days is that we have started consultations,” Mr Griffiths said. “The road back to peace has started – not in the way that we want it, but it has begun.”
The envoy said that he appreciated the commitment and engagement of the Yemeni government delegation.
Mr Griffiths hinted that the snag had been logistics after the Iran-backed rebels failed to show up before Thursday’s scheduled talks and raised last-minute demands.
“We didn’t manage to get the Houthi delegation from Sanaa to come here,” he said.
Mr Griffiths ruled out the Houthis’ initial claim that they had not received authorisation to fly out of Sanaa, the Yemeni capital they seized in 2014.
The rebels then added demands, including that wounded fighters be taken to Oman for treatment and a guarantee that the delegation would be allowed to return to Yemen.
Before the official announcement that talks were postponed, Yemen’s Foreign Minister, Khaled Al Yamani, told The
National that he hoped for more substantial discussions soon.
“As a result of the Houthis’ absence the process will be postponed and we look forward to more serious and engaging processes in the future,” Mr Al Yamani said on Friday night.
The minister, who leads the government delegation, said that the international community should have been more serious in dealing with the rebels.
“We wanted the UN to be firmer in bringing the other party to the consultations,” Mr Al Yamani said yesterday.
He said that if the rebels were sincere about reaching a peace deal they should have gone to Geneva, even if the two factions were meeting in separate rooms with Mr Griffiths as an intermediary.
“The UN Envoy was making excuses for the Houthis in his statements, Mr Al Yamani said before leaving Geneva. “He was defending the rebels and justifying their actions.”
Rana Al Ghanem, a member of the government delegation, told The National that the Houthis had been trying to sabotage the UN and international community’s efforts to find a political resolution to the Yemeni crisis.
“Their participation was vital here,” Ms Al Ghanem said. “We needed them to be here so that we could start the official process but they are not serious.”
The government negotiating team arrived in the Swiss city on Wednesday and have held several informal meetings with Mr Griffiths.
The UN envoy declined to blame either side for the failure to start the consultations, saying that it would not help Yemen.
A diplomatic source told The
National that the UN envoy held meetings with the government delegation and other parties to try to convince the Houthis to go to Switzerland.
“We tried to find various ways of getting the Houthis here over the past three days, but we couldn’t,” the source said, adding that this was not the end of the process.
Mr Griffiths insisted that the meetings held were fruitful and some good progress was made, especially on confidence-building measures.
He said he would start work
on holding new talks between the two sides wherever and whenever.
The three-day talks in Geneva focused on releasing prisoners, the Houthis allowing delivery of humanitarian aid to areas such as Taez and getting both sides to agree to a unified central bank operation.
An agreement has been made for medical evacuations from the Houthi-held Yemeni capital of Sanaa, scheduled to start in a week with a flight to Cairo.
Mr Griffiths called it an “early achievement”.
Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs said that a political solution was the only way forward in finding peace in Yemen.
“What is perhaps clearer now to the international community is the unwillingness of the Houthis to engage in good faith with such a process,” Dr Anwar Gargash said on Twitter.
The UN-mediated talks in Geneva would have been the first public meetings involving delegations from the government and rebels since 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to reach agreement on power-sharing.