Yemen’s president announced on Thursday he had formed a new council to lead the war-wracked country, state media reported, a major shake-up in the coalition battling Houthi rebels.
“I irreversibly delegate to this presidential leadership council my full powers,” President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi said in a televised statement early Thursday, the final day of peace talks held in Saudi Arabia’s capital.
Hadi’s internationally recognized government, supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels have been locked in a violent power struggle since 2014, when the insurgents seized the capital Sanaa.
A United Nations-brokered truce that started Saturday — the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan — has offered a glimmer of hope in the conflict considered the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
The truce came as the peace talks were unfolding in Riyadh without the participation of the Houthis, who refused to hold talks on “enemy” territory.
Some analysts had cast doubt on what the negotiations could achieve in the absence of the Houthis, but Thursday’s news could mean sometimes fractious anti-Houthi forces are united in any future negotiations.
Hadi also announced he had sacked Vice President Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar.
The new council will consist of eight members and be led by Rashad al-Alimi, a former interior minister and adviser to Hadi.
Hadi said it would “negotiate with the Houthis to reach a ceasefire all over Yemen and sit at the negotiating table to reach a final political solution.”
Hadi has been based in Saudi Arabia since fleeing to the kingdom in 2015 as rebel forces closed in on his last redoubt, the southern port city of Aden.
A ‘new page’?
The formation of the council represents “the most consequential shift in the inner workings of the anti-Houthi bloc since the war began”, Peter Salisbury, senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group, said on Twitter.
But he cautioned that implementing the arrangement would be “complicated to say the least.”
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met the council and said he hoped for a “new page” in Yemen, footage aired by state media showed.
Saudi Arabia said it welcomed Hadi’s announcement and pledged $3 billion in aid and support, some of it to be paid by the United Arab Emirates.
Yemen’s 30 million people are in dire need of assistance.
A UN donors’ conference this month raised less than a third of its $4.27-billion target, prompting dark warnings for a country where 80 percent of the population depends on aid.
The UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said Wednesday that there had been a “significant reduction of violence” since the truce took effect but both sides have accused each other of minor “breaches” of the ceasefire.