RIYADH, April 7, 2022 (BSS/AFP) - Yemen's president announced Thursday he
is handing his powers to a new leadership council, in a major shake-up in the
coalition battling Huthi rebels as a fragile ceasefire takes hold.

   "I irreversibly delegate to this presidential leadership council my full
powers," President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi said in a televised statement early
Thursday, the final day of peace talks held in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

   Hadi's internationally recognised government has been locked in conflict
with Iran-backed Huthi rebels who control the capital Sanaa and most of the
north despite a Saudi-led intervention launched in 2015.

   A United Nations-brokered truce that took effect on Saturday -- the first
day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan -- has offered a glimmer of hope in
the conflict which has triggered what the UN describes as the world's worst
humanitarian crisis.

   The truce came as the peace talks were unfolding in Riyadh without the
participation of the Huthis, who refused to attend talks on "enemy"
territory.

   Some analysts had cast doubt on what the negotiations could achieve in the
absence of the Huthis, but Thursday's news may help the sometimes fractious
coalition battling the rebels to speak with one voice in any future peace
negotiations.

   Hadi also announced he had sacked Vice President Ali Mohsen Al-Ahmar.

   The new council will consist of eight members and be led by Rashad al-
Alimi, a former interior minister and adviser to Hadi. Hadi said it would
"negotiate with the Huthis to reach a ceasefire all over Yemen and sit at the
negotiating table to reach a final political solution."

   Hadi has been based in Saudi Arabia since fleeing to the kingdom in 2015
as rebel forces closed in on his last redoubt, the southern port city of
Aden.

   - A 'new page'? -

   The formation of the council represents "the most consequential shift in
the inner workings of the anti-Huthi bloc since the war began", Peter
Salisbury, senior Yemen analyst for the International Crisis Group, said on
Twitter.

   But he cautioned that implementing the arrangement would be "complicated
to say the least."

   Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, met the
council and said he hoped for a "new page" in Yemen, footage aired by state
media showed.

   Saudi Arabia said it welcomed Hadi's announcement and pledged $3 billion
in aid and support, some of it to be paid by the United Arab Emirates.

   Yemen's 30 million people are in dire need of assistance.

   A UN donors' conference this month raised less than a third of its $4.27
billion target, prompting dark warnings for a country where 80 percent of the
population depends on aid.

   The UN special envoy for Yemen, Hans Grundberg, said Wednesday that there
had been a "significant reduction of violence" since the truce took effect
but both sides have accused each other of minor "breaches" of the ceasefire.