HODEIDA: Yemen’s Ansar Allah fighters have agreed to hold talks for the United Nations to play a “leading role” in running the lifeline port in embattled Hodeida, UN envoy Martin Griffiths said on Friday. Griffiths, who started a Yemen peace mission in Ansar Allah-held Sanaa on Wednesday, said he has discussed with the organisation’s officials “how the UN could contribute to keeping the peace” in Hodeida.
“I am here to tell you today that we have agreed that the UN should now pursue actively and urgently detailed negotiations for a leading UN role in the port and more broadly,” he told reporters during his first visit to Hodeida.
Griffiths urged Yemen’s warring parties to “keep the peace” in the port city. “The attention of the world is on Hodeida. Leaders from every country have called for us all to keep the peace in Hodeida,” he said.
Griffiths was in the country ahead of planned peace talks in Sweden in December between the Ansar Allah fighters and pro-government forces backed by a Saudi-led coalition.
Both warring sides have expressed support for the envoy’s mission to hold discussions to end a war that has pushed the country to the brink of famine.
According to the World Health Organization, nearly 10,000 people have been killed in Yemen’s conflict, though some rights groups estimate the toll could be five times higher.
The United Nations said it was ready to help supervise vital Hodeida port to protect it from “potential destruction”.
“We discussed... how the United Nations can take a leading role in operating the port, we have to do this quickly through discussions with all the parties,” Griffiths, said after his meetings.
“We think that by playing this role we would help preserve a lifeline to the people in Yemen,” he said, according to an Arabic translation of his remarks which was supplied to local reporters.
UN spokesman Rheal LeBlanc told reporters earlier in Geneva that Griffiths had specific ideas about managing the port that he would present to the parties to the conflict.
The aim was to “protect the port itself from potential destruction, and preserve the main humanitarian pipeline to the people of Yemen,” LeBlanc said.
LeBlanc said Griffiths wanted a halt to the recent escalation in fighting around Hodeida in order to “create a conducive environment” for the Sweden consultations.
An estimated 85,000 children under five may have starved to death in Yemen since 2015, Save the Children said on Thursday.
Almost half of Yemen’s children are chronically malnourished, which can stunt their growth, World Health Organisation spokesman Christian Lindmeier told reporters on Friday.
“Thousands of under-nourished people are dying of diarrhoea, pneumonia and measles,” he added.
— AFP/Reuters
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