Dubai: Negotiations between warring Yemeni parties set to resume in Kuwait on Friday have been postponed, the Kuwaiti ambassador to the Arab League was quoted as saying on Wednesday.
Ambassador Ahmad Al Bakr said following his meeting with the Arab League Secretary-General that the UN-backed talks his country has been hosting will resume at a later date.
Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi on Wednesday said the rebel Al Houthi militia and allied forces loyal to now-ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh continue to reject what he described as “clear determinants” of a roadmap to a peaceful settlement in Yemen.
A Yemeni state news agency quoted Hadi as saying that the government’s commitment to peace efforts was faced only by “procrastination and stalling [on peace talks] by the rebels” who perpetrated a coup d’etat.
Hadi was speaking during a meeting with US deputy chief of mission in Yemen, Richard H. Riley, and British charge d’affaires in Yemen Andrew Hunter.
Hadi further stressed that the humanitarian situation is worsening in several besieged Yemeni cities as the Houthi-Saleh rebel militias continue to block the entry of food and medicines for civilians.
The UN’s mediator, Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad, landed at Sana’a airport on Wednesday afternoon ahead of meetings with Al Houthi and Saleh representatives.
The envoy met this week with Hadi in Riyadh to prepare for a resumption of talks between the two sides in Kuwait on Friday.
Kuwait City has already hosted more than two months of UN-backed negotiations that have failed to make any real headway.
The talks, aimed at ending a war that the United Nations says has killed more than 6,400 people since March 2015, were suspended at the end of June.
Fighting has persisted across Yemen despite a truce that came into force on April 11.
Separately, fighting in Yemen killed at least 44 people in a 24-hour period to Wednesday, military officials said, as the UN’s peace envoy arrived in the capital to meet rebels.
Saudi-backed government forces clashed with the Al Houthi rebels and fighters loyal to Saleh in battles across western Yemen.
On Wednesday pro-government forces seized a mountain base from Al Houthis in Nahm, northeast of Sana’a, said military spokesman Abdullah Al Shandaqi.
Eight loyalists and 17 rebels were killed in the battle, he said.
A Saudi-led coalition operating in Yemen since March 2015 supported the assault with air strikes, said military sources.
Four soldiers and four rebels also died during battles in Marib province, east of Sana’a, when pro-government forces repelled a rebel attempt to seize a hill overlooking their base, a government source told AFP.
Further north, coalition air strikes against a rebel convoy killed seven rebels in Jawf province, said the army.
In the oil-rich southern province of Shabwa, four soldiers died during battles that saw the army make “slow progress” against rebels, said Colonel Motleq Jawhar, an infantry commander in the region.
