Yemen peace talks extended for a week says Kuwait

The negotiations have now been extended until August 7, according to a foreign ministry statement cited by the official KUNA news agency.

They would have ended without result on Saturday after the government delegation decided to pull out.

United Nations envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed held talks with both delegations on Saturday and proposed a framework for a comprehensive settlement.

“I met today with both delegations (and) suggested a one-week extension to the talks,” Ould Cheikh Ahmed wrote on Twitter.

He said he also proposed a “framework for a solution to the crisis in Yemen”, without elaborating.

Sources from the two delegations told AFP the proposed settlement is based on the withdrawal of rebels from territory they occupied in 2014, the handover of weapons and a return of state institutions.

Yemen’s government delegation to the talks had said it was planning on leaving Kuwait later Saturday after the rebels and their allies announced the creation of a council to run the country.

“There can be no more talks after the new coup,” delegation spokesman Mohammad al-Emrani told AFP on Friday.

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The Huthi rebels and the General People’s Congress of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh on Thursday jointly announced setting up a 10-member “supreme political council”.

Its job will be to “manage state affairs politically, militarily, economically, administratively, socially and in security”, a statement said.

The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and the ambassadors of 18 other nations backing peace in Yemen also called for a resumption of peace talks in separate statements.

They also condemned the formation of the “supreme political council”.

Indirect negotiations in Kuwait since April have failed to make headway. Most of the discussions focused on the type of the transition government to run Yemen.

More than 6,400 people have been killed in the Arabian Peninsula state since a Saudi-led coalition intervened in March last year in support of the government of Yemen President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.

Another 2.8 million people have been displaced and more than 80 percent of the population urgently needs humanitarian aid, according to UN figures.