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GENEVA/DUBAI: The war in Yemen can be stopped because the warring sides still support a UN peace deal brokered in Stockholm last December, UN envoy Martin Griffiths said on Tuesday.
The four-year war between the Iran-aligned Houthi militia and an Arab coalition supporting the Yemeni government has killed many tens of thousands of people and left millions on the brink of famine.
“I believe that this war in Yemen is eminently resolvable,” Griffiths told reporters in Geneva.
“Both parties continue to insist that they want a political solution and the military solution is not available. They remain committed to the Stockholm agreement in all its different aspects.”
He said that while the Stockholm agreement was taking some time to be implemented, both sides saw it as a gateway to opening up negotiations on a political solution, and the international community supported the deal.
Last week a meeting between the warring sides, on the neutral ground of a UN ship in the Red Sea, brought a surprise breakthrough, with agreement on technical aspects of a cease-fire deal in the flashpoint port of Hodeidah.
Griffiths said those talks had made more progress than he had expected, reaching operational agreements on troop withdrawal plans under the Stockholm deal, which envisages a UN-backed team taking over management of the port as the two armies pull back.
There were several issues that remained unresolved, including how to handle the port’s revenue and governance, and how to handle local security forces, Griffiths said.
He said he also took heart from the movement of coalition forces out of Yemen.
Last month, the United Arab Emirates, a key member of the Saudi-led coalition, began scaling back its military presence, Western diplomatic sources told Reuters.
Griffiths said it was a very deliberate push toward a commitment to peace.
The peace process was still vulnerable to a “detonation” such as attacks on Saudi infrastructure which could open up a regional conflict, he said, adding that he was attempting to de-escalate things before they reached that point. 
Meanwhile, the United Arab Emirates, part of the Arab coalition fighting in support of the legitimate Yemeni government, is not leaving the war-torn country despite an ongoing drawdown and redeployment of Emirati forces, a UAE minister has said.
“Just to be clear, the UAE and the rest of the coalition are not leaving Yemen,” minister of state for foreign affairs Anwar Gargash said in an opinion piece published Monday in The Washington Post.
“While we will operate differently, our military presence will remain. In accordance with international law, we will continue to advise and assist local Yemen forces.”
The UAE announced earlier this month it was drawing down and redeploying troops in Yemen, where a years-long conflict between government forces — backed by the Arab coalition — and Iran-aligned Houthi militia has pushed the country to the brink of famine.
The UAE is a key partner in the military coalition which intervened in Yemen in 2015 to back the internationally-recognized government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi against the rebels.
Gargash said Houthis should see the UAE move as a “confidence-building measure to create new momentum to end the conflict.”
“As the United Arab Emirates draws down and redeploys its forces in Yemen, we do so in the same way we began — with eyes wide open,” he said.
“There was no easy victory and there will be no easy peace.
“But now is the time to double down on the political process.”
The warring sides have fought to a stalemate, and several rounds of UN-sponsored talks, the last held in Sweden in December, have failed to implement any deal to end the war.
(With AFP and Reuters)