Yemen: UN envoy for extension of talks

Kuwait City : The UN’s envoy yesterday asked Yemen’s warring parties to pursue peace negotiations in Kuwait for another week after the government said it was quitting the UN-brokered talks.

Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed’s appeal appears to be a last-ditch attempt to rescue the four-month negotiations in Kuwait City, which are on the verge of collapse.

“I met today with both delegations (and) suggested a one-week extension to the talks,” Ould Cheikh Ahmed wrote on his Twitter account.

He said he also proposed a “framework for a solution to the crisis in Yemen” but did not elaborate

There was no immediate comment from the Yemeni government of from the Iran-backed Huthi rebels.

A source close to the government said however that the team was studying the proposal.

Yemen’s government delegation to the talks hosted by Kuwait had said it was planning on leaving the Gulf emirate later Saturday after the rebels and their allies announced a council to run the country.

“There can be no more talks after the new coup,” delegation spokesman Mohammad al-Emrani said on Friday.

The Huthi rebels and the General People’s Congress of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday jointly announced setting a 10-member “supreme political council”. The job of the council will be to “manage state affairs politically, militarily, economically, administratively, socially and in security”, a statement said.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and the ambassadors of the 18 nations backing peace in Yemen have also called for a resumption of peace talks in separate statements.

They also condemned the formation of the 10-member Council. Indirect negotiations held in Kuwait since April have failed to make headway. Most of the discussions focused on the type of the government to run Yemen during a transition period. More than 6,400 people have been killed in Yemen since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in support of the government of Yemen President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Another 2.8 million people have been displaced and more than 80 percent of the population urgently needs humanitarian aid, according to UN figures.

Meanwhile, a police officer was killed yesterday in Aden when a bomb planted in his car in Yemen second city Aden blew up, a security official said.