Yemen’s president on Thursday announced the creation of a new presidential council to lead the battered country, ravaged by the war that has raged since 2014 against Houthi rebels, state media reported.
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“I irreversibly delegate my full powers to this presidential council,” Yemeni President Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi said in a televised statement early Thursday morning, on the last day of peace talks in the Saudi capital.
This new council will be made up of eight members and will be led by Rashad al-Alimi, a former interior minister and adviser to Mr. Hadi.
The government of Mr. Hadi (recognized by the international community and supported since 2015 by a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia) and the Houthi rebels (supported by Iran which denies supplying them with weapons) have been vying for power since insurgents took the capital Sanaa in 2014.
A truce wrung out by the United Nations came into effect on Saturday (the first day of Ramadan, the month of Muslim fasting), offering a glimmer of hope in a war that has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.
Under this new truce, which can be renewed “with the consent” of the belligerents, all military air, land and sea offensives must cease, in this conflict which has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, according to the UN, and pushed this poor country on the Arabian Peninsula to the brink of starvation.
The announcement of the truce came as discussions on Yemen were being held in Saudi Arabia, in the absence of the rebels, who said they refused to participate in talks in “enemy” territory.