SANAA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Chief of Yemen's Houthi rebel group Abdulmalik al-Houthi on Saturday accused the Saudi-led coalition of hindering them from traveling to the peace talks in Geneva.
"The aggressive coalition has blocked our delegation from travelling to Geneva," al-Houthi said in a speech aired by the group's al-Masirah television.
"In the previous talks (in Kuwait in 2016), the United Nations (UN) demanded us to waive any compensation if the delegation plane was targeted during their return to Sanaa... so this time we asked a guarantee for our delegation to return safely," he said.
"Our delegation was not able to return safely at that time only through the exchange of U.S. spies we had arrested in our country," al-Houthi said, adding that the coalition turned down their request for transferring injured Houthis.
The UN-sponsored talks between the two warring rivals were scheduled to start on Thursday but the Houthi leaders decided to set new conditions before talks, including flying some of their seriously injured members to neighboring Oman for treatment.
"I called on all free Yemenis to go to the front line to defend the country," he said.
Earlier in the day, the UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths told a press conference in Geneva that the UN finally failed to manage to get the Houthi delegation to the talks.
"They (Houthis) would have like to get here, we didn't make conditions sufficiently correct to get them here," Griffiths said, adding that it was "too early to say when next round of consultations will take place."
However, he did not detail on why the Houthi delegation fail to show up.
On Thursday, the Houthis said the Saudi-led coalition prevented their delegation from flying to Geneva to attend the meeting.
On Wednesday, the delegation of the internationally-recognized Yemeni government arrived in Switzerland's Geneva to attend the new round of talks and gave the Houthis 24-hours ultimatum to show up.
In 2016, a similar UN-backed peace negotiations between the Yemeni rival parties in Kuwait have failed to achieve peace progress after several months of talks.
Yemen has been locked into a civil war since the Houthi rebels overran much of the country militarily and seized all northern provinces, including capital Sanaa, in 2014.
Saudi Arabia is leading an Arab military coalition that intervened in Yemen in 2015 to support the government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi after the Houthi rebels forced him into exile.
According to the UN, Yemen is now undergoing the world's worst humanitarian crisis, with an estimated eight million of Yemenis remaining precariously close to famine.
The war has killed more than 10,000 people, mostly civilians, and displaced three million others.
According to a latest statement by the World Food Programme, intensified conflict is worsening the humanitarian situation, particularly in Hodeidah, the key port which is a lifeline for millions in northwestern Yemen.
