Houthi rebels and Saudi Arabia reach an impasse in Yemen talks

The Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have announced that negotiations with Saudi Arabia to resolve the region's crisis have stalled due to a disagreement over the source of funds to be paid to civil servants as salaries.

The Houthi rebels' SABA news agency reported on Saturday that the head of the group's Supreme Political Council, Mahdi al Mashat, announced the halt in negotiations with Saudi Arabia during a speech at the beginning of the new academic year in the capital Sana.

Saudi Arabia and Houthi rebels have been negotiating a new and potentially permanent cease-fire in recent months in Sana, the country's capital controlled by the group since it drove the Yemeni government out almost eight years ago.

Mashat said he was leading the negotiating delegation with Saudi Arabia, but that the talks had stalled due to a disagreement over the source of funds to pay civil servant salaries.

Nearly 500,000 civil servants living in Houthi-controlled areas of Yemen have had their salaries cut for years due to the war in the country and the split of the Central Bank.

Though the details of the initial agreements have not yet been made public by either the Saudi government or the Houthi rebels, Mashat's announcement indicated that Riyadh had agreed to pay the pending salaries of these employees.

Riyadh was asked to pay civil servants' salaries from Yemen's oil and gas revenues, Mashat said, adding that Saudi Arabia wanted to transfer oil and gas revenues to its central bank and then pay civil servants' salaries as "charity."