ANSD : U.N. to launch Yemen peace road map within months

FRI 26 - 4 - 2024

Date: Apr 18, 2018
Source: The Daily Star

U.N. to launch Yemen peace road map within months

_{Agence France Presse}
UNITED NATIONS: The United Nations’ new peace envoy for Yemen said Tuesday he will present a plan within two months to relaunch negotiations to end the conflict but warned that missile strikes on Saudi Arabia risked derailing resolution efforts. Addressing the Security Council, Martin Griffiths said a possible sharp escalation from the missile attacks on Saudi Arabia and intensified fighting could “in a stroke, take peace off the table.”

“My plan is to put to the council within the next two months a framework for negotiations,” Griffiths said in his first council report since taking over as special envoy in February.

The Arab-led coalition battling Yemen’s Houthi rebels Monday warned it was ready to inflict a “painful” response if new attacks are carried out against Saudi Arabia.

But in a sign of defiance, the rebels late Monday fired a new missile towards southern Najran province, which was intercepted by Saudi air defense, the kingdom’s state-run Al-Ekhbariya TV reported. It was the latest in a series of similar incidents.

Coalition spokesman Turki al-Malki told reporters in the eastern city of Al-Khobar Monday that the airport of rebel-held capital Sanaa was used as a military base to orchestrate the drone strike.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government last week said the drones were “made in Iran.”

It added that Yemen’s military did not possess such aircraft and it was “impossible to manufacture them locally.”

Griffiths cited the increased number of ballistic missile launches, intensified military operations in northwest Saada governorate, ongoing airstrikes and movements of forces in the Hudaida region as worrisome developments.

“Our concern is that any of these developments may, in a stroke, take peace off the table. I am convinced that there is a real danger of this,” the envoy said.

War-wracked Yemen is in the midst of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, according to the United Nations, with 75 percent of the population – 22 million people – in need of aid, 7 million of whom are at risk of famine.

More than 10,000 people have been killed since the Arab-led alliance joined the Yemen war in 2015, according to the World Health Organization.

A severe cholera outbreak in the country has also killed 2,000 people and infected 1 million, the International Committee of the Red Cross said.

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