ADEN // The Yemeni government says all sides in the country’s conflict are preparing for a week-long truce starting on December 15 as peace talks take place in Switzerland.
The UN has tried to take pro-government forces and Iran-backed rebels to the table for months to end a war that has killed thousands and plunged the impoverished nation into humanitarian crisis.
“An agreement on a ceasefire between the government and the putschists should enter into force on December 15 with the start of negotiations,” foreign minister Abdel Malak Al Mekhlafi said yesterday.
UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said on Monday that those caught up in the fighting desperately needed it to stop.
Mr Ahmed said three delegations would take part in the talks, which would last “as long as it takes”.
Talks will focus on four main areas, including terms for a permanent ceasefire and withdrawal of Houthi rebels and their allies from the areas they have seized.
Confidence-building measures will be another area of dialogue, including broadening humanitarian access in the country where aid workers have been killed and kidnapped.
Delegates will finally try to hammer out a political future for Yemen, which was plunged into worsening chaos after the rebels overran the capital Sanaa and expanded south, forcing the government to flee to Saudi Arabia before it returned to Aden last month.
The delegations will include representatives of president Abdrabu Mansur Hadi’s government, the Houthi rebels and officials from the General People’s Congress (GPC), who are loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Atlhough not formally aligned, some GPC members have expressed support for the Houthis.
A source in Mr Hadi’s cabinet said the truce would last seven days, as specified in a letter sent by Mr Hadi to the UN Security Council.
The agreement reached calls on the rebels to “lift the siege of towns, allow the entry of humanitarian aid and free military and political detainees,” the source said, adding that the truce “will be supervised by the UN and could be extended if respected by the rebels”.
There was no immediate confirmation from the rebels that they would abide by a ceasefire, but Mr Ahmed has said he is certain the Iran-backed Houthis will show up.
The UN envoy said Saudi Arabia had promised to stop its campaign of air raids during talks.
“By respecting the ceasefire, the Houthis could signal their good intentions to move forward on implementing” UN Security Council Resolution 2216, calling on rebels to withdraw from territory and hand back weapons they seized, the cabinet source said.
The truce announcement followed Sunday’s assassination of the governor of Aden, Jaafar Saad, in an attack claimed by the ISIL, which has threatened further violence.
Extremists have exploited the conflict by making sweeping gains.
Mr Ahmed said he was “extremely concerned by the ever-growing suffering of the Yemeni people” and called on the rival camps to show “courage, personal sacrifice and tenacity” in the bid for peace.
The Saudi-led coalition yesterday kept up its strikes on rebel positions around the strategic city of Taez in south-western Yemen, the scene of fierce fighting in recent weeks.
Military sources said at least four civilians were killed by rebel shelling on residential areas there.
The UN says more than 5,700 people have been killed in Yemen, almost half of them civilians, since March.
* Agence France-Presse
