KUWAIT (Reuters) - Members of warring Yemeni factions who had stayed in the capital Sanaa two days past the start date of United Nations-backed peace talks announced they would travel to the negotiations in Kuwait on Wednesday, saving the process from impending collapse.
"We will be leaving tomorrow afternoon, God willing," Mahdi al-Mushat, a representative of the Houthi movement, wrote on his Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) page.
"We confirm that we will leave for Kuwait, carrying all the worries, wounds, aspirations and hopes of the great Yemeni people," Yahya Duwaid, a representative of the ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh, wrote on his account.
Envoys from Yemen's Houthi movement and Saleh's party had refused to talk peace amid ongoing ground combat and air strikes by a Saudi-led military coalition which they say violated a truce agreed a week before.
But concerted pressure from regional and international diplomats has succeeded in bringing the factions to the table with their enemies from Yemen's government which they ousted from the capital in March of last year.
The spread of allied Houthi-Saleh forces throughout Yemen sparked a military intervention by mostly Gulf Arab states, and the year of war that followed has killed around 6,200 people and plunged the country into a humanitarian crisis.