JEDDAH: Chief UN observer Patrick Cammaert arrives in Jordan on Friday en route to Yemen to monitor a cease-fire in the Red Sea port of Hodeidah.

He travels with the truce on a knife edge, after the Saudi-led coalition said the peace deal was “a dead duck” unless the UN acted to curb violations by Iran-backed Houthi militias.

Cammaert, a retired Dutch general and former military adviser to the UN secretary-general, heads a Redeployment Coordination Committee set up as part of a peace deal reached after talks last week in Sweden.

He chaired the committee’s first meeting by videoconference from New York on Wednesday “to discuss the general outlines of its work, including agreement of a code of conduct,” UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.

UN chief Antonio Guterres was “breathing down the neck” of officials to make sure the UN observers were deployed as soon as possible, Dujarric said.

Cammaert’s “departure to Yemen depends on logistics arrangements and flight availability,” a UN official said.

Brig. Gen. Ahmed Al-Kokbani, a Yemeni government representative on the committee, said the videoconference with Cammaert covered the bases of the committee’s mission. “Cammaert asked members of the team to work diligently in calming the situation and to reject any violations,” he said.

An uneasy calm returned to Hodeidah on Thursday after further overnight skirmishes. There has been intermittent fighting between Saudi-backed government forces and Houthi militias since the cease-fire came into effect on Tuesday.

A coalition official said the level of intensity of Houthi attacks had decreased, which was “a positive sign but too early to draw concrete conclusions.”