Yemen talks in Kuwait end without peace deal: FM

By Faisal Yassir

KUWAIT

The Yemeni government on Saturday announced the end of UN-brokered talks with the Houthis in Kuwait without reaching a peace deal to resolve the conflict in Yemen.

The move came shortly after the Houthi group and allied former president Ali Abdullah Saleh announced a 10-member council to run the country.

“The consultations end today without achieving peace that we wanted for our people and country,” Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalik al-Mekhlafi, who leads the government delegation to the talks, said on Twitter.

He blamed the Houthis and their allies for the failure of the UN peace talks.

“The government delegation has made everything for peace,” he said.

On Saturday, the Houthi group and Saleh’s General People’s Congress party announced the names of ten officials who would comprise a political council to run the country.
According to the Houthi-run Saba news agency, the two sides will rotate the position of the council’s president and vice president.

UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed has denounced the move, saying it undermines efforts to resolve the conflict in Yemen.

Yemen has been racked by chaos since late 2014, when the Houthis and their allies overran capital Sanaa and other parts of the country, forcing President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi and his Saudi-backed government to temporarily flee to Riyadh.

In March of last year, Saudi Arabia and its Arab allies launched a massive military campaign in Yemen aimed at reversing Houthi gains and restoring Hadi’s embattled government.

Backed by Saudi-led airstrikes, pro-Hadi forces have since managed to reclaim large swathes of the country’s south -- including provisional capital Aden -- but have failed to retake Sanaa and other strategic areas.

In April, the Yemeni government and the Houthis entered into UN-sponsored peace talks aimed at resolving the conflict, which has so far killed more than 6,400 people and forced 2.5 million others to flee their homes.