Houthis<\/a>\u00a0are hoping to discuss a range of issues at the talks, including the drafting of a new constitution and the decentralisation of power.<\/p>\n“We are hoping these negotiations will help end the war,” al-Ajri said.<\/p>\n
“We will be calling for the land, sea and air blockade imposed on Yemen [by Saudi Arabia and the UAE] to be lifted, and for restrictions on goods entering the country to be lifted.”<\/p>\n
Saudi Arabia has led a coalition fighting against the Houthis since March 2015, months after they toppled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi’s government.<\/p>\n
According to the UN, the planned “consultations”, which could start on either Wednesday or Thursday, will be attended by the main “parties to the conflict” – even as Saudi Arabia and the UAE, who play a leading role in the war, and Iran, which supposedly backs the Houthis, are not invited.<\/p>\n
However, all three countries, which have considerable leverage over the opposing sides, have said they support the UN’s initiative to end the war,\u00a0al-Ajri said.<\/p>\n
The Special UN Envoy for Yemen, Martin Griffith, has been hoping to get both sides to agree to a “framework” that “establishes the principles and parameters for UN-led, inclusive Yemeni negotiations to end the war, and restart a political transition”.<\/p>\n
“Yemen is a small and simple country. It is culturally homogenous and there are no ethnic or cultural divisions,”\u00a0al-Ajri said.<\/p>\n
“We hope to engage in an inclusive political dialogue that will lead to a new transitional process.<\/p>\n
“Yemen\u2019s need for federalism is so that it can overcome one centre of power and the country\u2019s wealth can be distributed fairly among everyone.”<\/p>\n
‘Modest expectations’<\/h2>\n
International pressure has mounted on Yemen’s warring parties to end the conflict, which has killed more than 56,000 people, according to a recent estimate, and left more than 22 million Yemenis needing humanitarian assistance.<\/p>\n
However, one Western diplomatic source told Al Jazeera that it was best to have “modest expectations” heading into this first round of talks.<\/p>\n
“I will be happy if they both turn up, meet face to face for a bit, agree on the prisoner exchange, argue a lot but agree to meet again in a month or so,” the source said on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Tuesday, Yemen’s government said it had agreed to a large-scale prisoner swap with the Houthis as part of a “confidence-building measure”, with reports suggesting as many as\u00a02,000 pro-government forces could be exchanged for 1,500 Houthis.<\/p>\n
The breakthrough came a day after the Saudi-UAE alliance\u00a0allowed 50 wounded rebels to be evacuated\u00a0from Sanaa to Oman on a UN-chartered plane for medical treatment.<\/p>\n
The Houthi delegation arrived in Sweden late on Tuesday after leaving the Yemeni capital Sanaa in a Kuwaiti chartered plane, accompanied by the Kuwaiti ambassador to Yemen and Griffith.<\/p>\n
Their arrival was confirmed by Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallstrom who wrote on Twitter that she expected the consultations to “take place soon”.<\/p>\n
A Houthi official told Al Jazeera that the head of the Houthi negotiating team, Mohammad Abdul Salam, was expected to head to Stockholm on Wednesday. Meanwhile, a delegation from Yemen’s internationally recognised government was also expected to arrive in Sweden later in the day.<\/p>\n
The upcoming round of talks will be the second attempt by the UN envoy to bring the rival sides to the negotiating table, just nearly three months after a previous round in September spectacularly collapsed when the\u00a0Houthis refused to turn up.<\/p>\n
Previous talks also broke down in 2016, when 108 days of negotiations in Kuwait failed to yield a deal and delegates from the rebel movement were left stranded outside Yemen for three months.<\/p>\n
‘Willingness to end the conflict’<\/h2>\n
Murad Alazzany, a professor at Sanaa University, said Yemenis were not placing high expectations on the talks.<\/p>\n
“Both sides neither have the willingness to end the fight and the suffering of the people nor the readiness to make significant concessions,” he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n
“Instead, the decisions are being made and imposed by a much larger entity – in this case by the allied western powers led by the US.<\/p>\n
“Those major players have made their choice clear and have presented a plan to keep the area in conflict and turmoil to secure more weapons deals and rake in larger revenues from oil sales.”<\/p>\n
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The war in Yemen has received considerable media attention since the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist and critic of Saudi Arabia’s foreign policy.<\/p>\n
Western powers have expressed their anger over the killing and have withdrawn their support from the Saudi-UAE alliance in Yemen in an attempt to communicate their displeasure.<\/p>\n
Germany and Norway have suspended arms exports to Saudi Arabia while the US has said it will stop refuelling the alliance’s warplanes.<\/p>\n
However, the Trump administration has refused to cancel a planned $110bn arms deal with Riyadh.<\/p>\n
Under the leadership of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the alliance has launched more than 18,000 air raids on Yemen since they joined the war.<\/p>\n
Weddings, funerals, schools and hospitals have been targeted, and the alliance has imposed a raft of punitive economic measures aimed at undermining the Houthis’ grip on power.<\/p>\n
According to the UN, the humanitarian crisis plaguing the country means more than\u00a012 million Yemenis will need\u00a0food assistance\u00a0next year.<\/p>\n
Source: AlJazeera<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A senior Houthi leader says his group hopes upcoming peace talks in Sweden will\u00a0end the war in Yemen and\u00a0lead to an “inclusive political dialogue”. Abdul Malik al-Ajri told Al Jazeera that the\u00a0Houthis\u00a0are hoping to discuss a range of issues at the talks, including the drafting of a new constitution and the decentralisation of power. “We are hoping these negotiations will… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":120,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/120"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2576"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2577,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2576\/revisions\/2577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/middleeastandnorthafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}