UN chief appoints new Yemen special envoy

UNITED NATIONS — The UN chief appointed a new special envoy to Yemen as pressure grows to return to peace talks while fighting continues in the Arab world's poorest country.

A statement Saturday says Ban Ki-moon has appointed Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed of Mauritania, who until now has led the UN's Ebola mission.

More than a thousand people have been killed in recent weeks after Iran-backed Shiite rebels swept through the country and a Saudi-led Sunni coalition began air strikes to drive them back. The Western-backed president fled the country as the Houthi rebels closed in, and warnings have since grown of a humanitarian crisis as food and fuel supplies run short. Shiite rebels have pressed an offensive in the south and a Saudi Arabia-led coalition intensified its air strikes less than two days after it said it was scaling back the campaign.

Ahmed replaces Jamal Benomar, who had said he was stepping down. Benomar had faced sharp criticism from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries as his recent efforts to broker peace showed little success, though for a time Yemen had been held up as a model country for its post-Arab Spring political transition.

Benomar's four years of efforts fell apart amid the Houthi rebel uprising and the air strike response, which has led to fears of a kind of proxy war between Saudi Arabia and its Sunni allies and Iran, a Shiite power that has supported the Houthis.

Yemen's UN ambassador, Khaled Alyemany, told the AP earlier this month that Benomar had not paid enough attention to the government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, Yemen's internationally recognised leader, and "had started to promote the Houthis, and we cannot accept that”. At the time, Benomar did not comment.

Alyemany called Ahmed "a very good UN diplomat and expert."

Ahmed has experience in Yemen, previously serving as humanitarian coordinator there.

An additional concern in Yemen is the growing presence of the Daesh terror group. Analysts fear the group is taking advantage of Yemen's chaos to expand there.

The head of UN operations in Yemen said in an interview with The Associated Press this week that a renewal of peace talks is "inevitable", and behind-the-scenes diplomatic efforts could bring results in the coming weeks.

The UN Security Council recently imposed an arms embargo on Houthi leaders and again demanded that they withdraw and stop the violence. The council also imposed an arms embargo on former president Ali Abdullah Saleh, who had stepped down in early 2012 as part of the UN-guided transition and now has aligned himself with the Houthis.

The Gulf Cooperation Council — which includes Yemen's neighbors Saudi Arabia and Oman as well as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates — put together the plan for a political transition in Yemen that was only partially carried out.