UN envoy visits Yemen's Sanaa to revive stalled peace talks

SANAA, March 24 (Xinhua) -- UN special envoy Martin Griffiths arrived in Yemen's Sanaa on Saturday in striving for resumption of stalled peace talks after three previous efforts produced no results.

Griffiths was set to meet dominant Shiite Houthi leaders and members of the party of slain ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who was killed by then his Houthi ally last December.

Griffiths' visit aimed at bringing the Houthis to the negotiating table after the peace process between the battling forces has stalled since August 2016.

Last week, Griffiths met with Yemeni President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, where they discussed ways to resume the UN-brokered peace negotiations between the internationally-recognized government and the Houthi rebels.

Griffiths succeeded recently the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed in February.

Three previous peace talks sponsored by the United Nations and hosted in Kuwait and Switzerland in 2016 had failed to end the war.

Earlier this month, the Houthis said they had secret talks with the Saudi side since two months ago to end the three-year war. However, the Saudi government denied the allegations.

Yemen has been locked in a civil war for three years after the Iranian-allied Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces including Sanaa in late 2014.

Saudi Arabia has been leading an Arab military coalition since March 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthis forced him into exile.

The war has killed more than 10,000 Yemenis, half of them civilians, and displaced over 3 million others, according to UN humanitarian agencies.

The ongoing war has hit a stalemate, creating the largest humanitarian crisis in the world and pushing the country into the brink of famine, with an estimated 385,000 children suffering from acute malnutrition, according to the UN. Enditem