SANAA: Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels left for Riyadh on Thursday night to try to negotiate a permanent ceasefire with Saudi officials to end the war in Yemen, two people involved in the talks said.

An Omani plane carrying a 10-strong Houthi delegation and five officials from mediator Oman headed towards the Saudi capital for what a Houthi government official said would be a five-day visit.

The talks, announced only hours earlier, come five months after Saudi officials held discussions in Sanaa, and as a UN-brokered ceasefire largely holds despite officially lapsing last October.

“The delegation will head to Riyadh to continue consultations with the Saudi side,” the Houthis’ political chief, Mahdi al-Mashat, said via the rebels’ Saba news agency. “Peace was and still is our first option and everyone must work to achieve it.” Yemen was plunged into war when the Houthis overran the capital Sanaa in September 2014, prompting the Saudi-led intervention the following March. The ensuing fighting has forced millions from their homes, causing one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises in a country already pummelled by decades of conflict and upheaval.

The six-month ceasefire that expired last October is still mostly observed but moves towards peace have been slow since the Saudi delegation visited Sanaa in April. The Houthi delegation took off on the Omani plane days after Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met Oman’s sultan on his way back from the G20 summit in India.

“Optimism exists regarding the mediation and the Omani efforts to achieve peace in Yemen,” Ali al-Qhoom, a member of the Houthis’ political council, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The head of the Sanaa Centre for Strategic Studies, Majed al-Madhaji, said that the Houthi visit “is like moving the relationship between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia from the back rooms to the living room”.—

Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2023