Qatari mediators restart efforts to invoke Yemen ceasefire

May 4, 2008, 12:06 GMT

Sana'a - A team of Qatari mediators resumed talks with government representatives and Shiite rebels on Sunday to enforce a fragile ceasefire in the north-western Yemeni province of Saada, official sources said.

They said the 11-member team arrived in Saada, some 230 kilometres north of Sana'a, early in the day to open talks with two delegations from the Yemeni government and rebel leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi.

Talks have been initially scheduled to resume last week, but the appointment of a new government delegation to a Yemeni-Qatari committee monitoring thr Qatari-mediated ceasefire forced a delay, the sources said.

Qatari Assistant Foreign Minister Saif Abu al-Eineen is attending renewed talks as the chief mediator.

Negotiations focus on the ceasefire deal that was inked in Doha last June and put an end to the deadly fighting that lasted for more than three years between the Yemeni army and members of the outlawed Shiite 'Believing Youth' rebel movement in Saada, known as Houthis.

The resumption of talks would help ease tension in Saada after Friday's mosque bombing that left 16 people dead and around 50 injured and the clashes that followed on Saturday.

Rebel fighters were besieging a government compound in the Munabeh district, according to local sources.

The Qatari team left Saada province in north-western Yemen in mid- April talks reached a deadlock.

Officials say Houthis insist on their refusal to vacate all the positions they hold.

Under the deal, rebels should leave their locations in the mountains of Saada on the border with Saudi Arabia, while the government in turn would gradually release detained rebels. Some 347 rebel supporters were released last February.

The rebels' refusal to hand over their strategic mountainous positions led to reluctance by authorities to release more detainees.

The agreement also provides that the rebel leader Abdul-Malik al- Houthi and his two brothers, Yahay and Abdul-Kareem, would be allowed to live in exile in Qatar.

Tens of thousands of army troops were deployed in Saada to crush a revolt that originally began after Shiite cleric Hussein al-Houthi, the elder brother of Abdul-Malik, established the movement in March 2004. Hussein was killed by the army in September the same year.

Waves of violent clashes since mid-2004 have left hundreds of government troops and rebels dead, and displaced thousands of civilians from Saada.

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has repeatedly accused the Houthis of trying to topple the republican regime and re-establish the rule of the Zaidi Imamate, a royal regime that was overthrown by a revolution in 1962.

Followers of al-Houthi belong mostly to the Zaidi sect of Islam, which is regarded as a moderate sect.