Dubai: The Yemeni government has chosen five advisers and a three-member technical committee to represent it in Geneva talks to bring an end to the war there, press reports said yesterday.
Members of the Yemeni delegation, which needs to be endorsed by President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, are advisers to the president and hail from different political backgrounds. Among the veteran Yemeni politicians on the team are Abdul Wahab Al Ansi and former prime minister Haidar Abu Baker Al Attas, according to the Saudi newspaper Al Riyadh.
Hadi left Yemen for Riyadh in March 2015 after the Iran-backed Al Houthi militias advanced on Aden after occupying the capital Sana’a in September 2014. He returned briefly to Aden in September after the Saudi-led coalition recaptured the southern city.
Hadi is expected to return to Aden after participating in the Arab-South American summit that starts in the Saudi capital on Tuesday, Yemeni press reports said.
Hadi is expected to issue several decrees, including a reshuffle of 12 cabinet posts, Yemeni media said.
Meanwhile, on the ground, battles continued between the Saudi-led Arab coalition and troops loyal to Hadi on one side and the Al Houthis and renegade troops loyal to former Yemeni president Ali Abdallah Saleh on the other.
Ongoing fierce fighting has been centered on Taiz. Four armoured vehicles arrived in the city early on Monday to reinforce loyalist forces.
“We are not playing a 90-minute football match,” Saudi Brigadier-General Ahmad Assiri, spokesperson for the Arab coalition, was quoted as saying in reponse to questions about the timetable of the campaign to recapture the strategic city of Taiz.
“When we say ‘soon’ we address the military mindset,” he said, adding that the Arab coalition has achieved in Yemen in seven months what the United Stated and Nato-led coalition of 28 countries failed to achieve in Afghanistan in 11 years.
According to Yemeni analysts, the Arab coalition and loyalist forces have made steady gains in the battle for Taiz.
Fouad Rashid, secretary of the Southern Movement, said forces backing Hadi have retaken nearly 75 per cent of Taiz, with the rest of the city still under the control of the Al Houthis. He told Gulf News that the coalition is also striving to exert full control of Marib region, with fighting continuing to reclaim the remaining 20 per cent of areas in the city.
Local sources in Shabwah were quoted as warning about the “advance of Al Houthi rebels and their supporters” in the oil-rich area.
As for Aden, it is totally under the control of the Arab coalition and the Yemeni President, said Aden-based political analyst Fadel Al Rubei, who heads the Madar Strategic Centre in the southern Yemeni city, in a recent interview with Gulf News.
