SANA, Yemen — Yemen’s internationally recognized president will not participate in UN-brokered talks this week with Shi’ite rebels who control the capital and much of the country’s north, his office said Sunday.
The statement said there would be no talks with the rebels, known as Houthis, unless they accept a UN resolution that obliges them to withdraw from areas they seized and surrender weapons taken from state institutions.
The announcement came as President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s government, currently in self-exile in Saudi Arabia, is making preparations to return to the port city of Aden at the end of this month after the Muslim Eid al-Adha holiday, two senior Yemeni government officials said.
More than 200 Saudi, Emirati, and Yemeni troops have come to Aden in the past two weeks to help secure the city and pave the way for the government’s long-planned return, Aden’s governor, Nayef al-Bakri, and progovernment security officials said.
Many Yemeni troops who were sent for training in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are returning to fight, progovernment officials said, reflecting the administration’s confidence that it can hold onto the key city that has been bitterly contested by the various sides in the conflict. Parts of Aden are now controlled by Al Qaeda.
Hadi fled Yemen this year for Saudi Arabia, which is leading a US-backed coalition that has been striking the Iran-supported rebels from the air since March.
Yemen’s conflict pits an array of forces against the Houthi rebels, who are allied with security forces loyal to former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. The conflict has killed more than 4,000 people, leaving the Arab world’s poorest country in the grip of a humanitarian crisis and on the brink of famine.
Several previous attempts to get the parties to end the conflict have failed, and it has proven nearly impossible to arrange a humanitarian pause to deliver desperately needed aid.
Also Sunday, a delegation of antirebel militia leaders from Aden traveled to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates at the request of the Hadi government to meet Yemeni and coalition officials, antirebel militia leader Adeeb al-Eisy said.
Progovernment officials said the visits aim to convince these fighters to lay down their weapons and withdraw from Aden and neighboring Lahj and Abyan provinces.
Antirebel militia fighters have refused to surrender their weapons to civil police, which is understaffed and not trained for full-scale combat, arguing it would leave them all defenseless in the face of Al Qaeda militants and other extremists, officials from both sides said.
Many of the antirebel forces also distrust the Yemeni government, especially young fighters who take credit for “the liberation of Aden” and see no reason to follow orders from others, they added.
In the Qaeda-controlled capital of Yemen’s sprawling province of Hadramawt, a suspected US drone attack on a military encampment Saturday killed at least four people east of Mukalla, independent security officials there said Sunday.
And in the contested central province of Marib, 25 fighters from both sides of the conflict were killed as Yemeni and coalition troops advanced, cutting off multiple Houthi supply lines, progovernment and independent security officials as well as local tribal leaders said.