UN’s special envoy for Yemen said on Friday he would immediately start working with the country’s warring parties on “the agenda, date and format” for face-to-face talks.
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed confirmed to the UN Security Council that both the government and Houthi fighters consented to send delegations to peace talks, Anadolu reported.
He added that the negotiations would be held on the basis of a framework stipulated by the Security Council in a resolution adopted in April, calling for the withdrawal of Houthis from territory and government institutions they had seized.
“We will soon be in a position to announce the location and the date, but it’s going to happen very soon,” Ahmed told reporters following his briefing to the council.
“Yemen is ablaze and the Yemeni population finds itself in a catastrophic situation. The country is bleeding and its cities collapsing.”
Ahmed said there are more than 21 million Yemenis in need of humanitarian aid, which constitutes 80% of the population.
Some 20 million lack access to safe drinking water and the number of severely malnourished children exceeds 500,000.
