22 February 2018•Update: 22 February 2018
By Murad al-Arifi
SANAA
Yemen’s Shia Houthi rebel group has submitted a proposal to the UN for ending its three-and-a-half-year war with the government, a senior Houthi official said Thursday.
“We have officially submitted our proposal to the UN General Assembly and Security Council,” Mohamed Ali al-Houthi tweeted.
The proposal, he said, had been issued by the Houthis’ High Revolutionary Committee and not by the group’s official negotiating team.
The initiative reportedly calls for holding presidential and parliamentary polls and forming a “reconciliation committee” tasked with overcoming outstanding differences between the two sides.
It also calls for "international guarantees” against further foreign intervention in Yemen; a general amnesty; prisoner exchanges; and popular referendums to settle main points of contention.
If the UN fails to respond to the proposal, Houthi officials say they will hold the global body responsible for Yemen’s continued humanitarian catastrophe.
Yemen has been wracked by chaos since 2014, when the Houthis overran much of the country, including capital Sanaa.
The conflict escalated one year later when a Saudi-led military coalition launched a wide-ranging campaign to retake territory lost to the Houthis and shore up Yemen’s pro-Saudi government.
