A demonstrator raises his hands after blocking a main road with burning tyres during a protest in Aden, Yemen, on Sept. 5, 2018. Demonstrations demanding economic reforms escalated across the country's southern provinces controlled by the government including the port city of Aden for the fourth consecutive day. (Xinhua/Murad Abdu)
ADEN, Yemen, Sept. 5 (Xinhua) -- Delegation of the internationally-recognized Yemeni government arrived Wednesday in Switzerland's Geneva to participate in a new round of talks sponsored by the United Nations to end a four- year-old military conflict with the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
A government official told Xinhua that a high-ranking team led by the country's Foreign Minister Khaled Yamani arrived in Switzerland to attend the UN-backed negotiations with the Houthis team.
He confirmed that the delegations representing the two-warring sides will hold meetings separately inside closed rooms and won't sit together during the negotiations period.
The official said that the talks will mainly focus on the humanitarian situation and releasing the prisoners, but political issues regarding the country's crisis and the ongoing civil war will be postponed for unspecified time.
Yemen's presidency is insisting that the release of former President Ali Abdullah Saleh's body and other political detainees from the Houthis' custody is a main priority for its negotiating team, according to the government official.
Both the Yemeni government and the Iranian-backed Houthis announced the delegates names and confirmed their participation in the next talks following four rounds of similar previous talks that failed to reach common ground.
Yemen's Vice President General Ali Mohsen affirmed that the government is entering peace talks for the fourth time in good faith, giving precedence to the interest of the Yemeni people over all other considerations.
According to the state-run Saba news agency, "Yemen's vice president expressed his hope that the Houthi militants will, likewise, give precedence to the interests of the Yemenis who endured an unprecedented suffering as a result of the Houthi coup in 2014."
A source close to Houthi officials confirmed to Xinhua by phone saying that "the issue of the strategic port city of Hodeidah will be included during Thursday's negotiations in Geneva."
"Houthis place a great significance for Red Sea port of Hodeidah and might insist on discussing the withdrawal of government forces from Hodeidah as condition to release detainees from their prisons," the source said.
Yemenis across the war-torn Arab country remain pessimistic ahead of the new negotiations, as the country's economy is collapsing and leaving already poor people more destitute.
The Yemeni riyal continued in sinking faster and faster in recent days after four nearly years of deadly military conflict. In the street markets in the southern port city of Aden, where the Saudi-backed government is officially based, one U.S. dollar was traded for 623 riyals, up from 215 riyals the rate set before the war.
On Sunday, Yemen's President Abdu-Rabbu Mansour Hadi chaired an emergency meeting and agreed to raise the salaries of thousands of public-sector employees and pensioners to reduce the impact of the currency devaluation.
President Hadi ordered the government to take effective and urgent measures to restore the stability of food and services supply following this week's further devaluation of the riyal against the U.S. dollar and the soar of prices of basic commodities.
But Hadi's decisions and promises apparently failed to cease the mounting anger against the Saudi-backed government as demonstrations spread to include the southeastern province of Hadramout, according to local observers.
Earlier in the day, demonstrations demanding economic reforms escalated across the country's southern provinces controlled by the government including the port city of Aden for the fourth consecutive day.
Stores, government institutions, banks and universities were shut down as civil disobedience continues to hit Aden, paralyzing daily life in the southern main city, where the government is based.
The impoverished Arab country has been locked into a civil war since the Iranian-backed Shiite Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including capital Sanaa, in 2014.
The internal military conflict between the Iranian-backed Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government recently entered its fourth year, aggravating the suffering of Yemenis and deepening the world's worst humanitarian crisis in the country.
