Under the auspices of the Gulf Cooperation Council, several Yemeni leaders, politicians and activists are meeting in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia for a week-long consultation aimed at ending the war in Yemen. The Riyadh consultations are considered to be the largest intra-Yemeni dialogue event since the National Dialogue Conference in 2013.
The consultations are supported by the 4 largest Yemeni parties (General People's Congress, Yemeni Congregation for Reform, Yemeni, and the Nasserist Unionist People's Organisation). The Southern Transitional Council and the Political Office of the National Resistance led by Tareq Saleh are also participating.
Opening the conference, Nayef Falah Al-Hajraf, secretary-general of the GCC, urged the participants to set aside their differences and find a comprehensive solution to end the war.
The agenda for the Riyadh consultations is somewhat different of that of the National Dialogue Conference as it also includes humanitarian, social development and recovery issues. Fahd Al-Sharafi, an advisor to the Yemeni minister of information, said that the political forces of Yemen are trying to reform themselves and the system.
However, the Yemeni president, Abdo Rabbu Hadi, and the vice president were absent besides a number of key government leaders. Other local Yemeni leaders expressed displeasure at the lack of clear goals and agendas of the consultations.
Also notably absent are the Houthis, who currently control the Yemeni capital and big chunks of the country, and who refused to participate because they did not agree Riyadh was a proper location for such an event
