Roundup: Yemen peace talks in Kuwait delayed due to continued battles

A new round of Yemen peace talks scheduled to begin in Kuwait on Monday has been delayed due to continued battles even amid a cease-fire, which led to some parties not showing up at the meeting.

"We are working to overcome the latest challenges and ask the delegations to show good faith, participate in the talks in order to reach a peaceful resolution to the crisis in Yemen," the UN special envoy to Yemen, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, said on Monday.

The delegation of Yemen's Houthi group and former Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, both allied against a Saudi-led Arab coalition that backs Yemen's President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, failed to arrive in Kuwait for the talks.

"The next few hours are crucial," the UN envoy said, urging rival sides to take their responsibility seriously and agree on comprehensive solutions.

He called on the Houtis and Saleh's National Dialogue Conference not to miss the opportunity to avoid more loss of lives in Yemen and to end the violence there.

The Kuwait talks is the third round of negotiations under the auspices of the United Nations, after two previous ones in June and December of 2015 failed to yield any progress.

It is hoped that the latest talks would end more than a year of Yemen's civil war and a Saudi-led military intervention, which have claimed more than 6,400 lives, over half being civilians, and displaced millions, according to UN statistics.

A latest cease-fire kicked off on April 10 and was supposed to pave the way for Monday's talks, but both warring sides have complained of violations by the other side, including continued heavy shelling and air strikes.

Reports said fighting on the ground and air strikes by the Saudi-led Arab coalition forces continued on several fronts across the country, especially in the contested southwestern city of Taiz and the Nehm area, east of the capital Sanaa.

Local residents said nothing has changed after the cease-fire, as both the warring sides were reportedly reinforcing their frontlines and re-positioning heavy weapons for further advances.

The ongoing crisis in Yemen started to deteriorate back in 2011, when former President Saleh was forced to step down from his 33-year rule and handed power to his then deputy Hadi, as part of a wave of protests and political turmoil that swept the whole Arab world.

A lengthy national dialogue ensued and ended in 2014, but failed to reach any consensus on power sharing.

The Houthis from northern Yemen, which belongs to a Shia sect that ruled a thousand-year-old kingdom in the north until 1962, began advancing southward in 2014, after fighting the government on and off for more than a decade. They claimed that they were leading a revolution against corruption.

In March 2015, then President Hadi fled to Riyadh after the Houthis had taken the capital Sanaa as well as nearly half of Yemen's governorates and allied with their former foe, Saleh.

Also in March, Saudi Arabia, leading a coalition of Arab forces, began a direct military intervention in Yemen aiming to back Hadi's internationally recognized government and to prevent the Houthis and forces loyal to Saleh from taking control of the whole country.

After more than a year of Saudi air bombing and ground actions, Yemen, already one of the poorest countries in the world, is suffering from a humanitarian catastrophe going from bad to worse.

UN figures show that more than 6,400 lives have been lost and over two million displaced. The ongoing battles have largely slowed shipment of food into the country that entirely depends on imports, leaving over half of its 26 million population in dire need of food aid.

The war between the Houthis and government forces also created a security vacuum that allowed extremist groups like the al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the Islamic State to expand their influence and territories, which in turn further complicates the process of peace negotiations. Endit