No agreement at Yemen peace talks in Geneva

Published on:

20 Jun 2015, 12:00 am

Yemen’s warring parties have failed to reach a deal at UN-hosted peace negotiations in Geneva that are set to wrap up on Friday, Yemen’s foreign minister in exile said.“We really came here with a big hope ... But unfortunately the Huthi delegation did not allow us really to reach a real progress as we expected,” Riad Yassin told reporters.He stressed though that “not getting a success as we hoped didn’t mean that we have failed,” adding efforts would continue to find a peaceful solution to Yemen’s brutal conflict.

He said the government delegation remained optimistic of a peaceful solution for Yemen “under the umbrella of the UN,” but said no date had yet been set for the next round of talks.Yemen has been wracked by conflict between Iran-backed Shiite rebels and troops loyal to exiled President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi, who fled to Saudi Arabia in February.

The rebels have overrun much of the Sunni-majority country and, along with their allies among forces loyal to ousted president Ali Abdullah Saleh, have been the target of Saudi-led air strikes since March. More than 2,600 people have been killed since then.UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched the high-stakes Geneva negotiations on Monday with an appeal for a two-week humanitarian truce during the holy Muslim month of Ramadan. But the belligerents’ positions have been so far apart that they have not even sat down in the same room, forcing UN special envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed to shuttle between them for separate consultations.

The negotiations have been bogged down by the government’s insistence that the rebels must withdraw from the vast territory they control, and its protest over the size of the rebel delegation, which is more than double the pre-agreed maximum of 10.