Cairo: The Yemeni government is not negotiating with Al Houthi rebels who captured the capital, Sana’a, last September, Foreign Minister Riyadh Yassin said on Thursday.
Al Houthis and troops loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh must lay down their arms and give the government full control over all of Yemen, as required by the United Nations, he said.
“Al Houthis and Saleh’s militias must implement the UN resolution and surrender their weapons, and only then the dialogue and political process can begin, with the participation of all Yemeni parties,” Yassin told reporters in Cairo after meeting with Arab League Secretary General Nabeel Al Arabi.
Referring to reports of envoys meetings in Oman, Yassin described them as mere “consultations” between UN envoy Esmail Ould Shaikh Ahmad and Al Houthis, aimed at convincing them to implement a UN resolution from April.
That resolution requested that Al Houthis withdraw from areas they seized and surrender weapons they took from the military and state institutions.
“That is the only solution that is on the table” there is nothing else,” said Yassin, who along with the rest of Yemen’s internationally recognised government is in exile in Saudi Arabia.
In a sign of a return to normalcy in the recently liberated southern city of Aden, the Aden Refinery Company offered a jet fuel cargo for September, its first such cargo since its 150,000 barrels-per-day refinery shut in April due to civil war, traders said on Thursday.
The company has offered 15,000 to 20,000 tonnes of jet fuel for loading from Little Aden oil harbour over September 10 to 12, the traders said. The tender closes on August 29 and is valid until August 31, they added.
It was not clear if the refinery is back in operation. The refinery declared force majeure on its oil imports and exports in April.
