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UN envoy arrives in Yemen to push for new round of peace talks

Xinhua, January 10, 2016 Adjust font size:

The UN special envoy for Yemen arrived in the capital Sanaa on Sunday to push for the next round of peace talks due to restart this month.

As long as the war in Yemen prolongs, "it complicates solutions, but we aim to find essential solutions to this conflict," said the UN envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed.

Yemen has been mired in an all-out civil war since September 2014, when the Shiite Houthi group, backed by forces loyal to the former president, invaded the capital Sanaa and drove President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi into exile. The war has killed nearly 6,000 people.

The warring forces held their latest talks in Switzerland in December, but failed to reach a political solution and only agreed to resume talks on Jan. 14.

The Saudi-backed Yemeni government, led by President Hadi, announced Saturday that the next round of peace talks would most probably be postponed to the end of January.

The move came after the former pro-rebel president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, said a day earlier that he would not negotiate with Hadi's government, vowing to "continue fighting to expel Saudi-led coalition forces from the Yemeni territories." Endit