The kingdom said it would adhere to a UN-controlled ceasefire across the country with Houthi rebels if the group accepted the terms of the initiative.
The Saudi initiative is the latest attempt to establish a ceasefire between the warring parties in Yemen. The UN has maintained stalled negotiations for years between opposing parties. More recently, U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken received no response after offering peace talks to the houthis.
A Houthi official dismissed the initiative as “neither serious nor new,” according to Houthi-owned news agency Al Masirah.
Houthi spokesman Mohamed Abdel Salam said on Twitter that any agreement must address a Saudi air and sea blockade. A recent CNN investigation in Yemen revealed that not a single tanker has been able to dock at the port of Hodeidah in northern Yemen this year due to a forced blockade by Saudi warships.
“Any position or initiative that does not recognize the aggression and blockade of the last six years and separate the humanitarian aspect from military and political problems and lift the blockade is neither new nor serious,” Salam said on Twitter.
The blockade has killed houthis of oil tax revenues, but has also critically hampered the ability of humanitarian agencies to provide aid, including food, as famine enters the country.
The Houthi group, aligned with Iran, controls northern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa and Hodeidah, and has been at war with a Saudi-led military alliance since 2015.
When asked how the “UN-supervised” ceasefire would work, Saudi officials who held a briefing to reporters said they had no details on where and how many UN officials would be involved. They said it would be “something that UN envoys will agree on.”
President Joe Biden announced earlier this year that the United States would end support for Saudi Arabia’s offensive operations in Yemen, in an action that lawmakers considered “historic.”
CNN’s Angela Dewan contributed to this report from London.