ADEN: A joint military delegation travelled to Aden on Thursday to discuss demands for a pullout of UAE-backed southern separatists from positions they captured in Yemen’s interim capital, government and separatist sources said.
The visit comes after deadly clashes last week in the southern port city that reflected a rift between Riyadh and Abu Dhabi, the main partners in a pro-government coalition.
The delegation’s mission was “to discuss the issue of the withdrawal of southern Security Belt forces from government camps and positions they seized last week”, a source in President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s government said.
A source from the Southern Transitional Council (STC), which is backed by the trained Security Belt, said “we will hold talks with them”, without giving details.
The forces backing the STC, which seeks an independent South Yemen, seized the presidential palace in Aden on Saturday after clashes with government loyalists left 40 people dead.
The clashes saw Security Belt forces seize control of five barracks, the presidential palace and the prime minister’s office.
The coalition condemned the takeover and urged the Security Belt to pull out from positions it captured, while calling for peace talks.
The STC has accepted the call for peace talks and its chairman Aidarus al Zubaidi said on Sunday that the separatists were ready “to work responsibly with... Saudi Arabia in managing this crisis”.
Without commenting on a possible pullout, it said the STC shared the coalition’s objective of “fighting against expansionism in the region”.
But Yemen’s internationally recognised government on Wednesday ruled out talks in Saudi Arabia with the separatists, as proposed by Riyadh, until they withdraw from positions they seized in Aden.
The Yemeni embassy in Washington, quoting the foreign ministry, has welcomed what it called the initiative to address the “coup” in Aden. But, it said in a tweet, that separatists “must first commit to total withdrawal from areas forcibly seized by STC in past few days before start of any talks”.
South Yemen was an independent country until it merged with the north in 1990. An armed secession bid four years later ended in occupation by northern forces, giving rise to resentment which persists to this day.
Thousands of Yemeni demonstrators marched in Aden on Thursday in support of the STC and called for the south to be declared an independent state.
Organisers said many of the demonstrators had travelled into the city from neighbouring southern provinces to add their voice to the calls for secession.
A similar military delegation also visited Aden early last year when clashes erupted between Hadi loyalists and STC forces.
The separatists are a major component of the Western-backed alliance that intervened in Yemen against Ansar Allah in March 2015, but have a rival agenda to Hadi’s government. The war has revived old strains between north and south Yemen, formerly separate countries that united into a single state in 1990.
The rally statement, issued by civil society groups and unions, accused Hadi’s government of mismanagement, saying it had become “a guillotine at Yemenis’ necks”.
The STC took over Aden after accusing the Islah party allied to Hadi of being complicit in a missile attack on southern forces earlier this month, a charge the party denies. — AFP
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