UN in advanced talks to take over besieged Yemen port

United Nations: Talks are at an advanced stage for the United Nations to take over the administration of the vital port of Hodeidah under siege from a Saudi-led coalition, the UN humanitarian coordinator Lise Grande said on Sunday.

The Red Sea port is the main distribution point for commercial and humanitarian supplies into Yemen.

The Saudi-led coalition have threatened to seize the port militarily from Houthi rebels, but the UN special envoy Martin Griffiths is trying to broker a deal for the port to be administered independently by the UN. This would meet Saudi demands that the Iranian-backed Houthis can no longer use Yemen's main entry point to smuggle arms and raise taxes to keep their war economy alive.

Both Britain and France failed to persuade the Saudi-led coalition not to mount the offensive last week, fearing the military attacks risk interrupting the supply of vital aid into a deeply fragile state.

There are further claims that the Houthis have mined the port, and could blow up its infrastructure as part of a scorched earth policy that incapacitates the aid programme.

Griffiths has been in Sana'a, the capital of Yemen, to negotiate with the Houthis for their orderly withdrawal from the port. He is due to report to the UN security council on Monday.

Grande said a political solution to the crisis was required and that Griffiths' talks to negotiate the handing over of the port by the Houthis and the United Arab Emirates to the UN had reached an advanced stage. In theory UN inspectors have boarded all ships entering Hodeidah to check commercial and humanitarian supplies do not contain weapons bound for the Houthis.

The UAE claims the Houthi's raise as much as $30-40m a year in taxes through their control of the port. Grande said 70% of humanitarian supplies and 90% of commercial supplies entered Yemen through the port, adding she feared a cholera outbreak of the kind that gripped the country last year. She said she was overseeing the largest humanitarian operation in the world and aid workers had decided to return to the city of Hodeidah due to the scale of the crisis.

But there are doubts Griffiths will be able to broker a deal on the port's administration given the Saudi-led coalition is determined to use its military advantage – and lack of active political opposition from the west – to press not just for a Houthi withdrawal from the port area, but from the entire region.

Some members of the UN-backed Yemen government were making far wider demands of the Houthis than simple withdrawal from the port and town.