The United Nations says it aims to resume Yemen peace talks “within a month”, a day after a similar call made by the United States that was condemned by the Houthi Ansarullah movement.
The United Nations’ envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths welcomed calls for an immediate re-launch of negotiations and a ceasefire in Yemen.
“I urge all concerned parties to seize this opportunity to engage constructively with our current efforts to swiftly resume political consultations to agree on a framework for political negotiations,” he said in a statement on Wednesday.
“We remain committed to bring the Yemeni parties to the negotiations table within a month,” Griffiths added.
On Tuesday, American officials called for a ceasefire in Yemen and demanded that the sides to the conflict come to the negotiating table within a month.
US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said the US had been watching the conflict “for long enough,” and that he believed Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were ready for talks. This is while officials of the former Yemeni government said on Tuesday that the Saudi-led coalition has sent 10,000 new forces to the Red Sea coast, ahead of a new offensive on Hudaydah “within days”.
“We have got to move toward a peace effort here, and we can’t say we are going to do it sometime in the future,” he said. “We need to be doing this in the next 30 days.”
Mattis’ call was later echoed by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who urged the coalition to stop airstrikes in Yemen’s populated areas, saying the “time is now for the cessation of hostilities.”
The Houthi Ansarullah movement opposed the US proposal for mediation in efforts to resolve the conflict in Yemen, holding Washington responsible for the Saudi-led aggression against Yemen.
Mohammed al-Bakhiiti, a member of Ansarullah’s Political Council, further stressed that Washington’s proposed solution for the Yemen conflict included dividing the country.
Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched a devastating military campaign against Yemen in March 2015, with the aim of bringing the government of former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi back to power and crushing the country’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement.
Earlier this month, the Legal Center for Rights and Developments in Yemen said the ongoing Saudi-led military campaign against the impoverished and conflict-plagued Arab country has claimed the lives of more than 15,000 civilians.
Griffiths invited the Houthis and the former officials to talks in Geneva in early September in an attempt to restore a UN-backed negotiation process that had broken off in 2016.
The Houthi representatives, however, could not attend the talks after Saudi Arabia refused to allow an Omani airplane, which had been meant to fly the officials, to land on the Yemeni soil.
Source: Press TV
