Sana’a: A UN peace proposal to end a 19-month-long war in Yemen appears aimed at sidelining exiled President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi and setting up a government of less divisive figures, according to a copy of the plan seen by Reuters.

Hadi fled the armed advance of the Iranian-allied Al Houthi movement in March 2015 and has been a guest of neighbouring Saudi Arabia ever since.

A UN Security Council resolution a month later recognised him as the legitimate head of state and called on the Al Houthis to disarm and quit Yemen’s main cities.

But Al Houthis and their allies in Yemen’s army have said he will never return, accusing him and his powerful vice-president, Ali Mushin Al Ahmar, of corruption.

The latest peace plan submitted by UN envoy Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad suggests Ahmar would step down and Hadi would agree to become little more than a figurehead after a Al Houthi withdrawal from the capital Sana’a.

It was not immediately clear if the men had been consulted on the plan. But their supporters have in the past insisted that past agreements recognising Hadi as leader must be respected.

“As part of the signing of a complete and comprehensive agreement, the current vice-president will resign and President Hadi will appoint a new vice-president,” the document says.

“After the completion of the withdrawal from Sana’a and the handing over of heavy and medium weapons (including ballistic missiles), Hadi will transfer all his powers to a vice-president, and the vice-president will appoint a new Prime Minister ... (who will form) a national unity government,” it added.

The proposal would technically confirm Hadi in office, as stipulated by the UN resolution, but leave him in reality with only a symbolic role.

A Yemeni government spokesman did not immediately comment on the initiative, but government officials say they are unwilling to legitimise what they see as a Al Houthi coup.

“We emphasise our conviction that all proposals are doomed to failure if (they don’t reject the) excesses of the coup, which is the mother of all these calamities and the root of the evils,” Abdullah Al Alimi, a senior official in Hadi’s office, wrote on Twitter.

There was no immediate comment from the United Nations, or from Saudi Arabia, which is leading a military coalition, including the United Arab Emirates, trying to dislodge the Al Houthis.

But UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Mohammad Gargash expressed his support for the UN plan on Thursday, saying on Twitter that “alternative options are dark”.

“The road map represents a political solution to the crisis of Yemen ... It is time to leave behind the logic of arms and violence among Yemenis, and the road map gives a chance for reason and dialogue to prevail,” he said.