The talks, bringing together the Houthi
...a Zaidi Shia insurgent group operating in Yemen. They have also been referred to as the
Believing Youth. Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi is said to be the spiritual leader of the group and most of the military leaders are his relatives. The Yemeni government has accused the Houthis of having ties to the Iranian government, which wouldn't suprise most of us. The group has managed to gain control over all of Saada Governorate and parts of Amran, Al Jawf and Hajjah Governorates. Its slogan is
God is Great, Death to America™, Death to Israel, a curse on the Jews...
group and its General People’s Congress party allies with the Saudi-backed government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, were originally scheduled to start on Monday.
They were delayed over alleged truce violations and disagreements over the agenda for the negotiations.
Kuwait’s foreign minister Sheikh Sabah al-Khalid al-Sabah, in an opening speech, urged Yemenis to "turn war into peace and backwardness into development."
The talks are based on UN Security Council resolution 2216 which calls for the Houthis to withdraw from areas they seized since 2014 and hand heavy weapons back to the government, UN special envoy to Yemen
...an area of the Arabian Peninsula sometimes mistaken for a country. It is populated by more antagonistic tribes and factions than you can keep track of. Except for a tiny handfull of Jews everthing there is very Islamic...
Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said.
"The choice today is one of two options: a safe homeland that ensures security for all of its citizens... or remnants of a land whose sons die everyday," Ould Cheikh Ahmed said in an opening speech.
The talks are expected to focus on creating a more inclusive government and restoring state authority over the country, which is now divided between the Houthis and Hadi’s administration.
The crisis began in September 2014 when the Iran-allied Houthis seized the capital Sanaa. A Saudi-led Arab alliance intervened last year, launching a campaign of mostly air strikes against the Houthis in support of Hadi’s forces.
The Houthi group and the GPC had accused the Saudi-led coalition and Hadi supporters of failing to honor a truce that began on April 10, and refused to send their negotiators to Kuwait until the truce was consolidated.
They agreed to join the talks following intervention by the five permanent members of the UN Security Council and UN Secretary-General
the ephemeral Ban Ki-moon.