Amid scattered violations of cease-fire, Yemen peace talks begin

Yemen’s opposing factions met for peace talks in Switzerland on Tuesday, United Nations officials said, as a cease-fire took hold in the embattled Arab nation amid some reports of violations.

The U.N.-sponsored talks, held with minimal media coverage, seek to put “an end to the armed conflict and return the country to an orderly, peaceful, political process,” said U.N. special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

“Yemeni people of all groups — men and women of all ages and communities — are undergoing unprecedented suffering as the beloved country of Yemen is being consumed by the flames of violence,” Ahmed said in his opening remarks to delegates at the conference, held in the Swiss village of Biel. “You are writing the history of modern Yemen, and you alone have the power to overturn the situation.”

“Yemen is tired of waiting for the new dawn of peace to break,” he added, according to a transcript released by the world body.

The talks bring together 24 Yemeni delegates representing the government of President Abdu Rabu Mansour Hadi, the Houthi militia and the party of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a U.N. statement said.

The Houthis, members of a minority Shiite Muslim sect that is widely seen as backed by Iran, are seeking a bigger role in the country’s governance.

Their alliance with Saleh, a onetime U.S. ally who was ousted in the wake of the “Arab Spring” uprisings in 2011, allowed the Houthis to seize Sana, the capital, in September 2014 and force Hadi’s government to flee.

In March, a Saudi-led coalition backed by U.S. logistical and intelligence support began a punishing air and ground campaign to roll back the Houthis’ gains and restore Hadi to power. He returned last month to the southern coastal city of Aden.

Since the Saudi-led campaign began, almost 6,000 people — half of them civilians — have been killed, according to the U.N. The country’s already disrupted access to food aid has deteriorated to the point of famine.

Ahmed hailed the cease-fire as a “critical first step toward building a lasting peace in the country,” despite its taking effect 12 hours after a Monday deadline.

Yet as the delegates convened, the various sides in the conflict exchanged blame for cease-fire infractions.

Local media outlet Al-Masdar, a pro-government news site, accused the Houthis of shelling areas in the country’s central and southern provinces.

Huffington Post Arabi, the Arabic-language arm of news aggregator Huffington Post, reported that seven people had died and 15 others were wounded in the southern city of Taiz.

Ali Bukhaiti, a Yemeni political commentator, said in a telephone interview from the Saudi city of Jidda that although coalition airstrikes and fighting near the border with Saudi Arabia had ceased, “fighting in all the internal battlefields is still ongoing.”

“The fighting there never stopped in the first place, so you can’t say there was a violation of the cease-fire,” he said.

Saba News, a state-operated news agency currently controlled by the Houthis, accused the coalition of conducting five raids in Maareb province.

Nevertheless, Ahmed saw the cease-fire as a vital opportunity to “guarantee unconditional and unrestricted access to humanitarian supplies throughout Yemen,” though it was not immediately clear whether delivery of humanitarian aid had begun.

Rana Sidani, a spokeswoman for the World Food Program, said nine trucks carrying humanitarian assistance to other areas of Yemen left Sana on Monday and six more left Tuesday.

Bulos is a special correspondent.

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