UN-sponsored Yemen talks open in Geneva

United Nations-sponsored consultations on the Yemen crisis have started in Geneva, with the aim of ending the bloody conflict in the country. Representatives from Yemen’s exiled government, the Houthi rebels, former president Ali Abdullah Saleh’s General Peoples’ Congress and other opposition groups were expected to attend the talks in Switzerland, which began yesterday morning.

Ban Ki-moon, UN secretary-general, was in attendance at the opening session of the talks, posing for photographs with a number of representatives of the Gulf Cooperation Council.

He called on all sides to implement a new “humanitarian pause” at the start of Ramadan later this week.

“The region simply can’t sustain another open wound like Syria and Libya,” he said, adding that the Houthi delegation was not expected to arrive in Geneva until yesterday night.

Announcing the start of “preliminary inclusive consultations” in the Swiss city, Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed, the UN’s peace envoy for Yemen, issued a statement before the talks calling on “Yemen’s political actors to participate in these consultations in good faith and without preconditions, and in a climate of trust and mutual respect”.

However, despite UN spokesman Ahmed Fawzy’s direct appeal for all parties to “observe a humanitarian pause to create a climate conducive to moving forward in this consultation”, fresh air strikes were reported in Yemen.

Sources told Al Jazeera that the Saudi-led Arab coalition carried out air raids on weapons stores in the capital Sanaa on Sunday night.

Al Jazeera’s Hashem Ahelbarra, reporting from Geneva, said the opposing sides were still a long way apart on how to bring peace to Yemen.

Our correspondent said the Houthi rebels wanted formal acknowledgement of a deal it signed with exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi when they took over the capital last September, whereas the exiled government wanted to scrap that deal and start again.

“This is an extremely delicate situation for the international community and the United Nations,” he said, adding that the two sides would initially start the talks in separate rooms.

The peace talks have sparked some hope among Yemeni civilians for an early resolution to the conflict.

“We hope that something positive will come out of these meetings between the various Yemeni parties because we want the war to be over,” Saber Nouman, a Yemeni national, told Al Jazeera.

“We want stability and we hope that the siege will be lifted soon because we’re suffering. As you can see, there is a shortage when it comes to everything -fuel, bread, water, medical supplies. We’re suffering every day because of the siege and because of this aggressive war.”

An Arab coalition has been bombarding Shia Houthi rebels and allied army units since March 26 in a campaign aimed at restoring President Hadi to power.

The conflict has killed more than 2,000 people so far, about of half of whom were civilians. – Aljazeera.