Houthis suspend talks after 'foreign intervention'

Mohamed Abdel Salam, spokesman of Yemen’s Houthis, said his group “has suspended consultations with official bodies because of the obvious intervention of foreign parties”.

This morning, a newspaper quoted the group as saying: “There was near agreement on the signing of a draft agreement, which stipulates meeting popular demands according to a clear road map.”

“This draft was approved by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi after his delegates presented it to him on numerous occasions during the final stages.”

However, Abdel Salam said that “Jamal Benomar, the UN envoy to Yemen, and Ahmed Awad bin Mubarak, representative of the Yemeni president, intervened after the statement of the Group of 10 Ambassadors [an informal body of Western and Gulf countries and international organisations involved in nudging along political reform in Yemen], and they have another plan, they want to return things to point zero again, and not only that, but are attempting to lengthen the time and consultation, giving the external groups the ability to consult building on the Gulf initiative, and the resolutions of the Security Council.”

He said Abdul Salam that “these things are of complexity, because the popular demands belong to the nation and the people of Yemen, and is not supposed to be for those third-party interference in the formulation of the policy of the country and its future”, loaded with power all the results that would result from the obstruction of the solutions. “

He said this has led his group to “escalate the revolution even further”.

It was not possible to get immediate comment from the office of the UN envoy or the president of Yemen.