US Seeks Direct Negotiations with Yemen’s Houthis

The United States is reportedly seeking to start negotiations with Yemen’s Houthis in an attempt to find a way out to the Yemeni civil war, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal Tuesday.

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Citing U.S. officials familiar with the matter the report said that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was also trying to bring up Saudi Arabia to the negotiation talks.

According to the journal, the U.S. initiative comes at a time when concerns are growing over a broader war in the region. 

The Houthis who control the capital Sanaa have been driving Saudi Arabia into a corner and pushing the war into an impasse, by managing to continuously attack the Saudi-led coalition in retaliatory advances. Over the past months, for instance, the Yemeni army has been able to send several missile and drone attacks on Saudi airports and oil facilities.

The U.S. move comes eight months after the two warring parties started peace talks in Sweden. However, no direct negotiations were held since Trump took office in 2017, according to a U.S. official.

Trump has encouraged arm sales to Saudi Arabia and has pledged to veto any resolution in Congress banning the sales.

Since the beginning of the conflict which has killed thousands of Yemeni civilians most of them children, and starved millions, Britain and France have licensed billions in arms exports to Riyadh, in addition to providing combat intelligence and target data to Saudi Arabia.

The Yemeni civil war started on March 26, 2015, when Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led a coalition of countries in a military campaign against the Houthis in Yemen in support of the Saudi-backed government of Abd-Rabu Mansour Hadi, with the full support of the U.S., the U.K., and France. 

The conflict has since turned into a proxy war between Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Iran. However, the Houthis denied being backed by the latter and say they took arms against corruption.

According to the United Nations, Yemen is suffering from the worst humanitarian crisis and from the most severe famine in more than a hundred years.