Yemen: Saudi-backed leadership, Houthis 'close to agreement' on renewing truce until December

Warring parties in Yemen could soon sign a truce to last until the end of 2023, official sources told The New Arab’s Arabic-language sister site on Thursday.

The likely renewal of a truce that collapsed in October last year follows meetings this week between members of the Yemeni Leadership Council and Saudi defence minister Khalid bin Salman in Riyadh, and will come with the signing of other agreements, the sources told Al-Araby Al-Jadeed correspondent Saddam Alkamali on condition of anonymity.

These will include loosening restrictions on flights to and from Sanaa airport, the resumption of oil exports, and the opening of blockaded roads in Taiz and other parts of the country, among other points.

However, the signing of the agreement is far from a certainty, as the Iran-backed Houthis had put forward some conditions that might not be accepted in full by Saudi Arabia, the sources said.

Hopes for an end to the years of war in Yemen were ignited when the Saudi-led coalition and the Iran-backed Houthis fighting in the country agreed to a two-month, UN-brokered truce in April of last year. The truce saw fighting largely grind to a halt.

The truce was twice renewed, but talks to keep the ceasefire in place stalled towards the end of last year.

War between the Houthis and the internationally recognised Yemeni government broke out in 2014 as the rebel group seized the Yemeni capital Sanaa. Saudi Arabia and its allies militarily intervened in the war on the side of the government in 2015.

The war and its associated impacts including famine have led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people and created what the UN has called one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters.

Hopes of a new peace deal had been rekindled in recent months when Saudi and Houthi officials met in Oman on multiple occasions, though it had appeared that the talks were producing little in the way of action.