Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed said on Friday firming up an April 11 cease-fire was essential to the success of the hard-won peace negotiations in Kuwait.
The United Nations hopes that the negotiations – which were originally due to begin Monday – will end fighting across Yemen that has killed more than 6,800 people and driven 2.8 million from their homes since March last year.
Military sources said the cease-fire was largely holding on the ground, although clashes were continuing around battleground third city Taiz and in the Saudi border province of Jawf.
The negotiations in Kuwait opened Thursday evening with a session lasting less than two hours following the delayed arrival of representatives of the Houthis.
The UN envoy, who spent months getting the warring sides to the negotiating table after a 13-month military aggression by a Saudi-led Arab coalition to restore fugitive former President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi, said Friday’s talks had been “very constructive.”
“There was a consensus on strengthening the cease-fire and the two sides were committed to the need to achieve peace and that this is the last opportunity,” he said.
“The cease-fire is respected between 70 percent to 80 percent all over Yemen,” he added, AFP reported.
Cheikh Ahmed said Houthis complained of continuing airstrikes by the Saudi-led coalition.
He said he had contacted Saudi Arabia about the coalition airstrikes and they had claimed the raids were ordered only in response to cease-fire violations by Houthis.
Coalition spokesman Brig. Gen. Ahmed Asiri said there were fewer breaches of the cease-fire than in previous days. “Our observations tell us that day by day the number of violations keeps decreasing.”
He acknowledged that fighting was continuing in and around Taiz.
Saudi Arabia’s aggression on Yemen started in late March 2015 in a bid to reinstate Yemen’s former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi and undermine the Houthi movement, which took over state matters after Hadi resigned.
Nearly 9,400 Yemenis, including 4,000 women and children, have lost their lives in the deadly military campaign.
Yemenis, in return, have been carrying out retaliatory attacks on the Saudi forces deployed in the country as well as targets inside Saudi Arabia.