Houthis arrive in Kuwait to start Yemen peace talks

A Houthi delegation arrived in Kuwait on Thursday for UN-sponsored Yemen peace talks that had been delayed for several days, a UN spokesman said.

"They have arrived in Kuwait just a few minutes ago," Charbel Raji, the spokesman for UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, told AFP.

The talks were originally supposed to start on Monday but were delayed after the rebels failed to show up in protest against what they described as Saudi violations of a ceasefire, in effect since April 11.

In a statement posted on Facebook earlier on Tuesday, Houthi leader Mahdi al-Mashti said: “We will [seek to meet] the aspirations of our people to achieve dignity, independence and freedom.”

The rebels only agreed to join the talks after they said they received assurances from the United Nations that pro-government forces would respect a ceasefire which has been violated by warring parties since it came into effect on 11 April.

Houthi representatives and their allies left Sanaa on Wednesday for Oman and they are expected to continue on to Kuwait.

But they were still in Oman on Thursday morning, according to diplomats.

There was still no word Thursday from the rebels on their expected time of arrival, yet according to the UN, the talks have been pushed back to 7 pm Kuwaiti time (1600 GMT) on Thursday evening.

In Yemen itself, fighting continued on several fronts, military sources said, as each side blamed the other for truce breaches.

The rebels late on Wednesday fired a rocket on the loyalist-held city of Marib, east of the capital, according to an AFP journalist there.

Pro-government military sources reported heavy fighting in Nahm, northeast of Sanaa, as well as sporadic clashes in the northern Jawf province, Taez in the southwest, and central Baida province.

The rebels meanwhile claimed on their sababnews.net website that a Saudi-led coalition fighting them in support of the Yemeni government carried out two air strikes on Nahm and flew sorties over Sanaa, Marib, and Jawf.

The talks are the most important attempt yet to resolve Yemen's devastating conflict, which the UN says has killed more than 6,400 people – half of them civilians – and forced almost 2.8 million forced from their homes.