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Roundup: Yemen Houthis says to deal with U.S. peace initiative if "aggression" halted

Xinhua, August 29, 2016 Adjust font size:

Yemen's dominant Shiite Houthi group and its allies said Sunday they would deal with a plan put forth by the United States to resume peace talks with a goal of forming a national unity government, only once the Saudi-led coalition "aggression" halted and "economic siege" lifted.

The Houthi stance came in an official statement carried by the group-controlled official Saba news agency on Sunday.

"The supreme political council would deal with any peace initiative once the military aggression is completely halted and economic blockade against the Yemeni people is lifted," the statement read, cited by Saba.

In a reply to a call by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry for Houthis to surrender their ballistic missiles, Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdulsalam wrote in a message posted on Facebook that "whoever has a greedy eye on our weapons, we will have a greedy eye on his life."

For Houthi foes, the Saudi-backed exiled Yemeni government welcomed on Saturday the U.S. initiative, saying the government is prepared to deal positively with any peaceful initiatives resulting from the meeting in Jeddah that included the foreign secretaries of the U.S., Britain and Gulf states.

On Thursday, Kerry said the Houthis must cease shelling across the border with Saudi Arabia, withdraw from the capital Sanaa, hand over their weapons including the ballistic missiles and enter into a unity government with their domestic foes.

Kerry's new peace road came after his meeting this week in Jeddah with foreign ministers of British and Arab Gulf states to end Yemen civil war.

The UN-sponsored peace talks to end 18 months of fighting in Yemen collapsed this month in host Kuwait.

In reaction, the fighting escalated between the Shiite Houthi fighters and internationally recognized exiled Yemeni government backed by a Saudi-led military coalition. The fighting also resumed across borders between Yemen and the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Saudis intervened in March 2015 to support the government of exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi to return to power in the capital Sanaa.

Shiite Houthis backed by forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh seized control of Sanaa in 2014 and drove out Hadi and his government into exile in Riyadh, the capital of Sunni Saudi Arabia.

The civil war and Saudi-led airstrikes have since killed over 6,500 people, mostly civilians, and displaced other three million. Endit