Nothing has changed in Yemen

THE crisis in Yemen is deepening day by day. Yemeni officials have said that removing President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi will “not solve the country’s problems” after their adversaries, the Houthi rebels, proposed the formation of a new transitional government. Abdulaziz Jabari, a member of the government’s delegation to peace talks in Sweden and a senior adviser to the President, said the country’s woes stemmed from the Houthi takeover of Sanaa and other large expanses of the territory, not from the position Hadi occupied.
“The problem is the military coup that took place in 2014,” Jabari told media on Saturday. “The problem is with those, who through aggression, took over our country…. Let’s say Hadi is out of the equation, this is not going to solve the problem. On the contrary, fighting over power will continue. Our biggest problem is that there is a group which has hijacked the state,” he said.
We know about the Yemen’s fruitless peace talks. Saudi Arabia, together with several other Arab nations, launched a military campaign in 2015 in support of Yemen’s the then government, aiming to roll back advances made by Houthi rebels after they overran much of the country in 2014. However, most countries have since withdrawn their forces from the US-backed coalition, with only Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates conducting attacks in Yemen.
Meanwhile, Yemen’s warring sides have been meeting in the Swedish town of Rimbo since Thursday for talks aimed at discussing ways to end the fighting that has killed an estimated 56,000 people and left a staggering 22 million needing humanitarian assistance. The negotiations, which are not face-to-face, are expected to last until December 14.
The rebels did not agree to the government’s three main points of reference to resolve the crisis. Now, they have suggested UN Security Council Resolution 2216, the outcomes of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) Initiative, and the outcome of a National Dialogue were outdated. The Houthis have refused to abide by UN Resolution 2216, which stipulates they withdraw from areas they seized in 2014 and hand over heavy weapons to the government.
The global superpowers, especially the US and Russia, with the help of United Nations, could play a key role in ending the bloody conflict in Yemen where millions of ill-fated starving children are now waiting for food and life-saving medicine.