On Friday, the delegation of the internationally recognised government of President AbdRabbu Mansour Hadi said it planned to pull out of the talks on Saturday.
Advertisement
The agreement proposed by the United Nations envoy includes clauses on both the Houthis and Saleh forces laying down arms, withdrawing for the Yemeni capital Sana, as well as the cities of Taiz and Hudaydah, and creating a military committee responsible for overseeing the process, the Sky News Arabia channel reported.
He said he also proposed a “framework for a solution to the crisis in Yemen”, without elaborating.
“The meeting approved the draft agreement presented by the United Nations calling for an end to the armed conflict and the withdrawal (of rebels) from Sana’a and the cities of Taiz and Al Hudaida”.
Saudi Arabia has been waging a war on Yemen since late March 2015 in a bid to return Hadi to power.
In a series of social media posts, Abdulmalik al-Mekhlafi briefly outlined the plan that would end almost two years of armed conflict between government forces and the Houthi rebels who overran the capital Sanaa in late 2014.
The government’s announcement came just hours after the coalition said a Saudi army officer and six soldiers were killed in border clashes on Saturday with the Yemeni rebels.
“We now leave Kuwait. but are not quitting the consultations and not ending them before August 7”, said the delegation head, Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi.
The UN special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, did not disclose the terms of the proposal but Yemen’s foreign minister said it required the rebels to withdraw from Sanaa and its surroundings and from Taez and Hodeida, and to hand over weapons they looted from military depots within 45 days.
They also condemned the formation of the “supreme political council”. Most of the discussions focused on the type of the transition government to run Yemen.
It would now be replaced by a “High Political Council” comprising 10 members equally divided between the Houthis and GPC to “manage the country’s affairs” in all political, military, economic and administrative spheres.
Mr Hadi is backed by a coalition of Gulf states led by Saudi Arabia, which has waged a merciless bombing campaign on Yemen since past year.
“The other party now has the key to make the talks fail or succeed”.
Meanwhile, a police officer was killed on Saturday when a bomb blew up his auto in Yemen’s second city Aden, a security official said.
Advertisement
At least 6,500 people have been killed during the past two years, including more than 3,200 civilians, according to several observatories.
