UN draft resolution calls for Yemen truce, two weeks to unblock aid shipments

A United Nations draft resolution has called for an immediate truce in Hudaydah, Yemen’s strategic port and its only conduit to the outside world, setting a two-week deadline for removing all barriers to humanitarian aid for the impoverished state.

The UK-drafted resolution was presented to the UN Security Council on Monday, following a report from a UN envoy to Yemen working to arrange peace talks in Sweden to end the nearly four-year war.

The measure comes as Saudi-backed militiamen loyal to Yemen's former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and foreign mercenaries have been fighting Houthi Ansarullah fighters over the past months for the control of the western Yemeni port city.

The draft text calls "on the parties to introduce a cessation of hostilities in Hudaydah governorate, to end all attacks on densely populated civilian areas across Yemen and to cease all missile and UAV attacks against regional countries and maritime areas."

The resolution also calls on warring sides to "facilitate the unhindered flow of commercial and humanitarian food, water, fuel, medicine and other essential imports across the country, including by removing within two weeks of the adoption of this resolution, any bureaucratic impediments that could restrict such flows."

The truce would go into effect on the day of the adoption of the resolution. A vote on the measure has yet to be scheduled.

Additionally, the Security Council has demanded that warring sides in Yemen engage with the UN special envoy for the impoverished country, Martin Griffiths, who is due to travel to Sana’a this week to finalize arrangements for the peace talks that he hopes to convene soon.

Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement announced in a statement on Monday that it was halting its counterstrikes in response to a request by Griffiths and as a goodwill measure to speed up peace process.

"After our contacts with the UN envoy and his request to stop drone and missile strikes...We announce our initiative ... to halt missile and drone strikes on the countries of aggression," said Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, the head of the Houthis' Supreme Revolutionary Committee, Reuters reported.

The group said it was ready for a broader ceasefire if "the Saudi-led coalition wants peace."

The UN special envoy to Yemen welcomed the Houthis' announcement to halt drone and missile counterstrikes on Saudi Arabia.

PressTV-Yemen fighters say halting counterstrikes on aggressors

Yemen’s popular Houthi Ansarullah movement, which has been defending the nation against a Saudi Arabian-led war, says it is halting its counterstrikes as a goodwill measure to speed up “peace” process.

"The special envoy welcomes Ansarullah's announcement ... hopes that all parties continue to exercise restraint, to create a conducive environment for convening the consultations," Griffiths said in a Twitter post.

The Saudi regime and its allies launched a deadly campaign against Yemen in March 2015 in an attempt to reinstall the country's former Riyadh-allied regime and crush the Houthi Ansarullah movement.

The Western-backed imposed war, which has so far failed to achieve its stated goals, has, however, constrained humanitarian deliveries of food and medicine to the import-dependent state and has led to a mass cholera outbreak and starvation from famine.

PressTV-14mn Yemenis on brink of famine, 35 NGOs warn

International NGOs have warned that the Saudi-led coalition’s war on Yemen has put 14 million people on the brink of famine.

According to a new report by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, the Saudi-led war has so far claimed the lives of around 56,000 Yemenis. 

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