Houthis say negotiations with Saudi Arabia stalled over salaries, as four fighters killed

Yemen’s rebel Houthi movement has announced that negotiations with Saudi Arabia stalled over differences regarding the payment of government employee salaries, as four Houthi fighters were killed in clashes with government forces.

The head of the Houthis’ political council, Mahdi Al-Mashat, said on Saturday at a ceremony held to mark the beginning of the new academic year in the Yemeni capital Sanaa that Saudi Arabia was refusing to pay salaries to Yemeni government employees from “our oil and gas resources”.

“Saudi Arabia has indicated that it’s ready to pay employee salaries, but not from the proceeds of oil and gas sources, but as sadaqah (voluntary Islamic charity) on its part,” Al-Mashat said, adding that the Houthis had rejected this offer.

Al-Mashat accused Saudi Arabia of “trying to loot Yemeni oil and gas resources and transfer them to the Saudi National Bank”.

Saudi Arabia intervened in the war in Yemen in 2015, one year after the Houthis seized control of Sanaa from the internationally recognised Yemeni government.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed as the conflict dragged on and the situation in Yemen was described as the world’s worst humanitarian crisis by the UN.

However, last March Saudi Arabia restored relations with Iran, which supports the Houthis, and began direct talks with the Yemeni group in April, under Omani mediation, but these have run into difficulties.

Al-Mashat vowed to “take back the salaries of [government] employees from the enemy alliance which stops its payment by stopping the export of Yemen’s oil and gas”, in a reference to the Arab coalition led by Saudi Arabia.

Yemeni government employees in areas controlled by the Houthis have not received their salaries for approximately seven years and this has increased poverty and suffering in the country.

In a separate development, the Houthis announced on Saturday that four of their fighters had been buried in the capital Sanaa following fighting with forces loyal to the internationally recognised Yemeni government.

The Houthis did not say when or where the fighters were killed but said that one had been a colonel.

A source from the Houthis who spoke to the Arabic news website Arabi 21 said that the fighters were killed on the frontline south of the city of Marib.