The talks hosted by the UK foreign secretary bring together representatives of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, US and the UN.
The United Kingdom Foreign Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, was set to hold a meeting on Yemen with his Saudi, and Emirati counterparts, as well as the representatives of the United States and the United Nations, amid fears that the peace process inthe poorest country in the Middle East has faltered.
The meeting in London on Friday is expected to discuss “next steps in the UN-led process … [in order] to try to prevent fragile efforts towards a political settlement from collapsing”, according to a press release by the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).
The talks will bring together Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Abel al-Jubeir, United Arab Emirates’ Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed and representatives from the US and the UN.
“I called this meeting so that we keep doing everything we can to move forward on the hard road to peace in Yemen,” Hunt said before the meeting.
“This is a horrendous conflict and it is taking too long to turn the ceasefire agreed to in Stockholm into a durable path to peace,” the UK foreign secretary added. Yemen’s warring sides agreed to a ceasefire in the flashpoint city of Hodeidah during UN-sponsored talks in Sweden last year
which aimed at ending more than three years of war between the Saudi-backed Yemeni government and Houthi rebels.
The warring parties also agreed to withdraw troops from the port city, the main entry point for 70 percent of imports and humanitarian aid to Yemen.
But the UN Security Council (UNSC), in a statement earlier this month, expressed “grave concern” that the agreements have not been carried out.
“Each day that the war in #Yemen goes on is a day too long for the children there. More than 100 die daily from extreme hunger,” Hunt said in a tweet.
