UN Envoy Urges Yemeni Decision-makers To End War

The United Nations has a roadmap for ending the raging civil conflict in Yemen, but the warring parties are not showing the required commitment to implement it, the outgoing UN Special Envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad, has said, while appealing to the country's decision-makers to show political will for restoring peace.

UNITED NATIONS, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th Feb, 2018 ) :The United Nations has a roadmap for ending the raging civil conflict in Yemen, but the warring parties are not showing the required commitment to implement it, the outgoing UN Special Envoy, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmad, has said, while appealing to the country's decision-makers to show political will for restoring peace.

"We do have a peace roadmap for Yemen. The practical suggestions to launch it and build confidence among the parties have been agreed upon," he said in his last briefing to the UN Security Council before the end of his mandate.

"The only part missing is the commitment of parties to make concessions and give priority to the national interest. This is what makes us doubtful of their real intention to end this war," the envoy added.

"Today, I would like to announce, for the first time, that we were about to reach agreement on a peace proposal, developed in consultation with the parties, but they refused to sign in the last minute, "Ould Cheikh Ahmad said.

"In the end of the consultations, it became clear that the Houthis were not prepared to make concessions on the proposed security arrangements. This has been a major stumbling block towards reaching a negotiated solution." He referred to peace talks in Biel in 2015 and Kuwait in 2016, but did not indicate when the Houthis dropped out of negotiations.

The discussions had led to a "peace roadmap with a clear timeline" that was never implemented, he said.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed, who has worked on Yemen since 2015, painted a bleak portrait of a country that is breaking apart, and with no "peace roadmap" between the Houthis, local forces and a Saudi-led coalition, the calamity is unlikely to end any time soon.

"We see daily reports about civilians dying of poverty, hunger or illness but we should not forget that many politicians from all sides are profiting from this conflict, from trading of arms and exploiting public properties for personal purposes," Ould Cheikh Ahmed said.

His concerns were echoed by UN humanitarian John Ging, who said three years of war had led to "catastrophic" conditions in Yemen, with some 1.1 million new cases of cholera since April 2017 and 8.4 million Yemenis on the brink of famine.

A proxy war is playing out in Yemen between Iran and US ally Saudi Arabia, which leads a coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015, backing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi's government against the Houthis.

Ould Cheikh Ahmed will be replaced by Martin Griffiths, a veteran peace-broker and former British diplomat who currently runs the Brussels-based European Institute of Peace (EIP) and is expected to bring fresh approaches to ending the war.

Tuesday's meeting comes amid the change of UN envoys and heightened diplomatic focus on a conflict that has hitherto garnered few headlines and little interest from major powers despite what the UN calls the world's worst humanitarian crisis.