SANAA: A UN peace proposal to end a 19-month war in Yemen appears aimed at sidelining exiled President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi and setting up a government of less divisive figures.

Hadi fled the armed advance of the Iranian-allied Houthi movement in March 2015 and has been a guest of neighbouring Saudi Arabia ever since.

A UN Security Council resolution a month later recognised him as the legitimate head of state and called on the Houthis to disarm and quit Yemen’s main cities.

But the Houthis and their allies in Yemen’s army have said he will never return, accusing him and his powerful vice president, Ali Mushin al-Ahmar, of corruption.

The latest peace plan submitted by UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed suggests Ahmar would step down and Hadi would agree to become little more than a figurehead after a Houthi withdrawal from the capital Sanaa.

It was not immediately clear if the men had been consulted on the plan. But their supporters have in the past insisted that past agreements recognising Hadi as leader must be respected.

Published in Dawn, October 28th, 2016