Riyadh // Yemeni factions laid out a political foundation for the country’s future on Tuesday while pledging to boost supplies of weapons to pro-government forces fighting Houthi rebels.
“We support this resistance to go on fighting”, exiled president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi said at the close of a three-day meeting in Riyadh.
The promise came as the Saudi-led coalition carried out its heaviest air strikes near the Yemeni capital since a five-day truce with the rebels expired earlier this week, hitting weapons depots in the mountains surrounding Sanaa.
The Houthis, who boycotted the Riyadh talks, have seized control of large parts of the country, including the capital in September last year.
Their southward push forced Mr Hadi and his government to flee to Riyadh and prompted the coalition to launch air strikes in March.
On the ground, pro-government forces have been battling against the Iran-backed Shiite Houthis and their allies, forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
A closing statement at the Riyadh conference sought the quicker delivery of supplies to the anti-Houthi forces including “logistical equipment and weapons”.
The meeting, convened by Mr Hadi and held in conjunction with the GCC, also pledged to build a “federal state” in Yemen.
The final declaration called for an end to the rebellion, restoring the state’s institutions and the return of arms looted from the military, according to WAM, the UAE state news agency.
A safe zone should be established where government institutions could resume their activities, the document said, and special forces should be formed to protect Yemen’s cities engulfed in the fighting.
The declaration also urged the UN Security Council to implement a resolution adopted last month which called for the Houthis to withdraw from the territory seized and adhere to the outcome of an earlier “national dialogue” tasked with drawing up a new constitution.
A financial and diplomatic boycott of the militia should also be enforced with the assets of the Houthi leaders frozen.
Mr Hadi said “dialogue is the only way to take Yemen out of its deadlock”, but added that any talks with rebels must take into account the UN resolution.
Dr Sultan Al Jaber, Minister of State, who led the UAE delegation, said the Riyadh conference would “lay a solid foundation for a modern state, bringing the armed conflict to an end and removing militias and any armed groups from all the country’s cities”.
“Establishing stability”, he said, was “the main factor that allows for concentrating efforts on economic and social development.”
Mr Hadi hailed the UAE’s support of the Yemeni people and their rejection of the Houthi power grab.
The conference took place as heavy fighting continued across Yemen.
Shortly after midnight on Monday, air strikes targeted rebel-held military depots in the mountains of Fag Atan and Noqom, where missiles, tanks and artillery are kept, residents in Sanaa said.
By sunset on Tuesday, a fresh wave of air strikes sent fire and smoke rising from the mountains around the capital. Dozens of families living close to the bombed sites hurriedly loaded their belongings onto vehicles and left in search of safer areas.
Elsewhere in Yemen, missiles hit several Houthi positions in their strongholds in the northern provinces of Saada and Hajjah, as well as a gathering of fighters allied with the Houthis in the city of Ibb, south of Sanaa. The rebels and their allies were also hit in the western city of Taez and the southern city of Aden, near its airport, as well as in the eastern province of Marib.
Air strikes also targeted a house owned by the former president Saleh in the Sanaa suburb of Sanhan, flattening it. Mr Saleh’s whereabouts is not known but his loyalists within the country’s fragmented army have joined ranks with the Houthis.
Since the rebel power grab started, most of Saleh’s homes have been occupied by Houthi leaders.
In response to the latest air strikes, the Houthis fired Katyusha rockets at the Saudi border region of Najran from Saada, according to tribesmen in the region. Nearby, the adjacent border area of Al Jouf province saw heavy clashes between Houthi fighters and tribesmen.
The battles are meant to open a new front line with Saada to distract the Houthis from shelling Saudi territories, the tribesmen said.
Late Monday, the rebels also continued to blow up homes belonging to rival politicians and security commanders in Yemen. In the latest in a string of detonations, the Houthis blew up the house of the newly appointed Chief of Staff Mohammed Al Maqdisi in the southwestern city of Dhamar, officials said.
Houthis and their allies have for weeks been trying to take over Aden, and the truce has apparently given them time to deploy more troops for that purpose.
A senior military commander in Aden said the rebels and their allies have surrounded the city from three different sides over the past weeks and are now in control of several large sections of Aden.
Tens of thousands of civilians have been displaced from the area and pro-Hadi fighters have been given three days to surrender their weapons, he added.
The Yemeni conflict has killed 1,820 people and wounded 7,330 since March 19, according to UN estimates. The estimates also show that nearly a half million people at least have been displaced in the period since the beginning of the fighting until May 7.
The UN said on Monday that a conference planned for next week in Geneva to relaunch peace talks has been suspended because of the renewed fighting.
*With reporting from Agence France-Presse and Associated Press
