22 April 2016•Update: 26 April 2016
By Zakaria al-Kamali
SANAA, Yemen
A session of direct talks kicked off Friday in Kuwait between delegations of the Yemeni government and the rebel Houthis alon with their allies loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh in the presence of UN mediator Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, Yemeni government sources said.
The sources told Anadolu Agency that “the session started 30 minutes late [...] as a result of Houthis’ objections to the consultation agenda that the UN mediator announced on Thursday in the opening session”.
According to the sources, the UN mediator refused the Houthis’ demand to amend the agenda asserting that it had been admitted since the Switzerland talks last December.
The five contested points included “agreeing on transitional security measures, withdrawal of armed groups, surrender of heavy and medium caliber weapons, receding state institutions, resumption of political dialogue and forming a special committee for prisoners and detainees”.
Many Yemenis see the talks as a new opportunity to end the conflict in their country, which has caused a major humanitarian crisis and displaced around 2.5 million people from their homes.
Previous rounds of UN talks in June and December between Yemen’s warring parties failed to end the conflict, which has killed more than 6,400 people, about half of them civilians.
Yemen fell into violence in September 2014 when the Houthis and pro-Saleh forces overran the capital Sanaa and several provinces, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his government to temporarily flee to the Saudi capital Riyadh.
Saudi Arabia and Arab allies accuse the Houthis of being an ally to regional foe Iran and have launched a massive air campaign to reverse the Houthi gains and restore Hadi's government.
Backed by Saudi-led airstrikes, the Hadi government forces have managed since July to reclaim large parts of the south of the country, including the provisional capital Aden, but have been unable to retake Sanaa and other key areas held by the Shia group.
