{"id":24743,"date":"2018-12-08T07:22:34","date_gmt":"2018-12-08T07:22:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24743"},"modified":"2018-12-08T07:22:34","modified_gmt":"2018-12-08T07:22:34","slug":"yemen-military-offensive-still-open-if-houthis-reject-hodeidah-pullout","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=24743","title":{"rendered":"Yemen military offensive \u2018still open if Houthis reject Hodeidah pullout\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

\nSTOCKHOLM: A government offensive on Yemen\u2019s Hodeidah remains an option if Houthi militias refuse to withdraw from the port city, a minister said on Friday, as the negotiators met for UN-brokered talks.
\u201cWe are now in negotiations in response to calls by the international community, the UN and the UN envoy. We are still looking into means toward peace,\u201d said Agriculture Minister Othman Al-Mujalli.
\u201cBut if they (the Houthis) are not responsive, we have many options, including that of military decisiveness,\u201d he told reporters in response to a question on the Houthi-occupied city. \u201cAnd we are ready.\u201d
Talks between Yemen\u2019s government and Houthis, linked to Iran, opened on Thursday in Sweden.
While the days leading up to the gathering saw the government and Houthis agreeing on a prisoner swap deal and the evacuation of wounded insurgents for medical treatment in Oman, both parties traded threats as the talks began. The two sides have not yet met face-to-face.
Talks are expected to focus the fate of Hodeidah, a city on Yemen\u2019s western coastline that houses the country\u2019s most valuable port.
The government accuses the Houthis of arms smuggling through Hodeidah \u2014 \u00a0also a conduit for 90 percent of food imports \u2014 and has demanded the militias withdraw from the port.
Al-Mujalli said the government was not open to negotiations on control of the port. The UN, he said, could play a \u201csupervisory\u201d role, but he rejected the idea of placing management of the port in the hands of a third party.
UN Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths urged both parties to spare Hodeidah.
\u201cIt\u2019s the humanitarian pipeline to the rest of the country,\u201d he said.
Negotiations also cover a prisoner swap between the two sides and the potential reopening of Sanaa airport, located in the Houthi-occupied capital and largely shut down for three years.\u00a0
The government is demanding planes be searched in one of two government-controlled areas \u2014 Aden or Sayoun \u2014 en route to or from Sanaa.
\u201cWe are keen on the opening of Sanaa airport, and we demand the opening of Sanaa airport and we know that the Yemeni citizen should have the right to reach any country in the world through Sanaa airport,\u201d said Abdulaziz Jabari, a presidential adviser and member of a Yemeni government delegation at the talks.
\u201cBut… we are looking into who will supervise Sanaa airport,\u201d Jabari said, adding that the airport could serve as a hub for domestic flights.
But Houthis on Friday turned down the government demand.\u201dSanaa airport is an international airport,\u201d said Houthi representative Abdulmalik Al-Ajri.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

STOCKHOLM: A government offensive on Yemen\u2019s Hodeidah remains an option if Houthi militias refuse to withdraw from the port city, a minister said on Friday, as the negotiators met for UN-brokered talks.\u201cWe are now in negotiations in response to calls by the international community, the UN and the UN envoy. We are still looking into…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":24744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24743","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}