Sanaa, February 12: Yemen agreed with northern rebels on Thursday to end a war that has raged on and off since 2004 and drew in neighboring Saudi Arabia. A truce began at midnight (2100 GMT), a Yemeni official said.
The Yemeni government, simultaneously battling a resurgent Al-Qaeda and southern separatists in addition to the northern insurgents, has been exchanging proposals with the rebels in recent days to end the conflict.
“The cease-fire is going to be in effect at 12 midnight,” the official told Reuters. There was no immediate response from the rebels.
Yemen said last week it had handed rebels a timetable for implementing the government’s cease-fire terms, a week after rejecting a rebel truce offer because it did not include a promise to end hostilities with Saudi Arabia.
The Kingdom was forced to join the war between the rebels and the Yemeni government on Nov. 4, a day after the rebels killed a Saudi border guard and occupied two villages inside Saudi territory. The rebels announced Jan. 25 that they had withdrawn from Saudi land. The Kingdom said they had been driven out.
Yemeni officials have said that as part of a truce deal, Sanaa would allow rebel representatives to sit on a committee overseeing the truce, and insurgents would hand over weapons they seized from the Yemeni and Saudi forces.
The official said President Ali Abdullah Saleh had briefed a committee charged with supervising conditions for a truce on his “terms to stop the war.”
Yemen state television said the government and rebels had also formed four smaller committees to supervise the truce in four areas, including on the Yemeni-Saudi border. The deadline for the full implementation of the truce had been a point of contention, with the rebels asking for more time for their fighters to leave mountainous positions, they said.
Qatar brokered a short-lived cease-fire between the government and rebels in 2007 and a peace deal in 2008, but clashes soon broke out again.
——-Agencies