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| Arabia |
| A window of opportunity for peace in Yemen? |
| 2015-10-16 |
| [ENGLISH.ALARABIYA.NET] Last week, Yemen's Houthi ...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews... rebels wrote to the U.N. secretary-general to affirm their commitment to both the seven-point peace plan brokered by the United Nations ...an idea whose time has gone... in Oman, and to relevant Security Council resolutions. Also last week, the General People's Congress (GPC), the party of former President President-for-Life Ali Abdullah Saleh ... Saleh initially took power as a strongman of North Yemen in 1977, when disco was in flower, but he didn't invite Donna Summer to the inauguration and Blondie couldn't make it... , accepted the peace plan and resolutions in an emailed statement. This, in theory, comes close to the position of the internationally-recognized Yemeni government and Saudi-led coalition, which have from the outset endorsed the U.N. plan as the only way forward. The key Security Council resolution 2216 of April this year demands, among other things, the end of hostilities and the withdrawal of Houthi militias and forces loyal to Saleh from Yemen's cities. Do these developments indicate that a political solution to the conflict is any closer than it was a few months ago? Not if previous talks and meetings between Yemeni warring parties as well as U.N.-led negotiations are anything to go by. In June, negotiations in Geneva were interrupted by insults, fist-fighting and shoe-throwing among the delegates. Not even a humanitarian truce during Ramadan came out of that round of talks. In May, a five-day ceasefire did not stop armed clashes between local resistance and the Houthi-Saleh alliance. Last year, before the conflict spread throughout the country, the U.N.-sponsored Peace and National Partnership Agreement, signed by all Yemeni factions, collapsed due to uninterrupted attacks by Houthi forces on state institutions. It is not only the Houthi leadership that has a recent history of striking deals they intend not to respect. After the uprisings against his rule, Saleh himself used the Gulf-backed transition plan of Nov. 2011 (which allowed him to return to Yemen with immunity from prosecution on condition that he transfer power to his vice-president) to play a disruptive role. |
| Posted by:Fred |
| #2 As a general rule, if a headline ends in a question mark, the answer is no. |
| Posted by: SteveS 2015-10-16 09:22 |
| #1 Should Peace and Yemen appear in the same sentence? |
| Posted by: g(r)omgoru 2015-10-16 05:31 |