Yemen can’t wait forever for peace roadmap: UN envoy

MANAMA: Yemen’s warring parties and beleaguered people cannot wait indefinitely for a roadmap to peace before the country slips back to war, the UN special envoy told AFP.

Hans Grundberg insisted it was “still possible” to solve the conflict in impoverished Yemen, where Iran-backed Huthi rebels control much of the country.

“At a certain point, there is an expected delivery that the parties want to see happen. And if that doesn’t take place, you risk losing the necessary momentum that you have, and that danger is clear.”

He added: “There are belligerent voices in the region. What I’m saying is, don’t go down that road -- it’s possible to settle this conflict.”

A UN-brokered ceasefire in April 2022 calmed fighting and in December last year, even after the Israel-Hamas war had started, the warring parties committed to a peace process.

But US and British strikes on Huthi targets in January, after the rebels began attacking shipping on the vital Red Sea trade route, “complicated the mediation space tremendously”. “On the basis of that, we have not been able to take the step forward from the commitments that were agreed to in 2023 to the assigned roadmap,” Grundberg said.

The UN envoy said it’s not “possible to move forward with the roadmap right now, because I don’t think that the implementation of that roadmap would be possible”. But he added: “I still believe that the foundation for a roadmap in Yemen is there because the conflict between Yemenis is solvable. “However, the complicating factor now is the regional destabilisation, where Yemen has become an integral part through the attacks in the Red Sea.” Grundberg said the roadmap is “not a magic wand” for Yemen.