Rebels offer terms of truce in Sa’ada War
Govt refuses to consider rebels truce offer
As before, Sadiq alAhmar pledges support (in 2007, he sent 800 fighters)
Saleh (as before) frames rebels as devilish and satanic
Bombing campaign continues today
Dueling initiatives- Saleh has six points and the rebels’ eleven.
Yemen Observer: He said that the rebels have to stick to the six conditions the government suggested before to establish peace in the region. The conditions include: lifting all road checkpoints that impede citizens’ travels, abandoning their military strongholds and coming down from the mountain peaks, handing over all civil and military equipment that they had seized, disclosing the fate of the six kidnapped foreigners, one British man and a German family, handing over the kidnapped Sa’adah citizens, and ending all interference with the local authority’s affairs and full withdrawal from all Sa’adah districts and eliminating all checkpoints from all roads.
The government refused on Thursday an initiative by some of the rebel leaders’ relatives to put an end to the war…
A group of al-Houthi relatives have submitted a message to the president on Wednesday consisting of eleven points which include the lifting of military checkpoints and the redeployment and return of military forces to their barracks, in return al-Houthis pledge to withdraw from the areas that they occupy and declare loyalty to the state, stipulating that the government should appoint directors as well as security and educational managers from al-Houthis. The memo also stated that al-Houthis should keep the Matarah and Naqah areas under their control, and that the army would withdraw its heavy military equipment from these two Houthi dominated areas and al-Houthis would return the areas back to the government within three years time. It also stipulated the release of war detainees and that al-Houthis should be free to teach their Zaidi faith….
The President refused earlier to give the Houthis the chance of negotiating a truce, nor would he consider mediation as a means of bringing the war to an end; “We are determined to eliminate this sedition,” he said, referring to the rebels as a devilish plant. “We are going to destroy this cancer in the province of Sa’adah, or wherever it may be found with a strong and inflexible will,” Saleh declared at a graduation ceremony for a number of military and security batches held in Sana’a on August 18th.
He accused al-Houthi rebels of forcing the government to build fortifications instead of schools and of making the government spend money on weapons instead of on development. For his part the spokesperson of al-Houthis, Mohammed AbdulSalam announced dissatisfaction on President Saleh’s announcement to continue the military operations in Sa’adah till totally crushing the satanic rebel’s ordeal.
AbdulSalam said that such speech should not be directed by a president against his own people, “Whatever political or theological conflict occurs the president usually represents the people” “We are not settlers in this country. We are part of it and of its history’s depth,” said AbdulSalam.
He also claimed that the government forces could not achieve any progress whatsoever adding that the rebels could capture the whole of all-Malahit district bordering Saudi Arabia. In the same context, Sheikh of sheikhs of the Hashid tribe, Sheikh Sadiq Abdullah al-Ahmar, announced his tribe’s support for the military and security forces to hunt down all al-Houthi rebels and their supporters. Sheikh al-Ahmar maintained that “this gang of Houthis has breached and violated the law and the constitution and must be uprooted,” as stated in the letter that he sent to President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
