Yemen: Yemeni government and Southern Transitional Council (STC) separatists sign power-sharing deal
Yemen’s Saudi-backed government and southern separatists have signed an agreement to end a power struggle in the south of Yemen that Saudi Arabia’s crown prince hailed as a step towards a wider political solution to end the multifaceted conflict.
The stand-off had opened a new front in the more than four-year-old war and fractured a Saudi-led coalition battling the Houthi movement that ousted the government of Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi from the capital, Sanaa, in the north in late 2014.
Saudi Arabia’s envoy to Yemen told reporters that the pact, reached after more than a month of indirect talks in the kingdom, would see the separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) join a new cabinet along with other southerners and all armed forces would be placed under government control.
“This agreement will open, God willing, broader talks between Yemeni parties to reach a political solution and end the war,” Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman said in a televised signing ceremony in Riyadh on Tuesday.