KUWAIT: Yemen’s warring parties are sending conciliatory signals ahead of UN-backed talks starting on Monday, in a rare sign of mutual willingness to end a year-old conflict that has caused one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Airstrikes and heavy combat persist in many parts of the country, while armed militias who could yet play a spoiling role loom throughout Yemen’s tangled political scene.

Four Yemeni soldiers were killed Sunday in a suicide attack on a checkpoint near the international airport in second city Aden, a security official said. Police said they foiled two car bomb attacks in Aden on Sunday.

But the recent rhetoric of the main combatants has been unusually mild.

“We are ready for a political transition which excludes no one ... The world now looks to the Kuwait consultations as a landmark of peace for Yemenis, and we will give everything we can to alleviate the suffering of the people,” Foreign Minister Abdel Malek Al-Mekhlafi, from the Aden-based government, told Saba.

Mohammed Abdul-Salam, spokesman for the Houthi movement which is allied to Iran appeared conciliatory in an interview with Kuwaiti newspaper Al-Rai on Saturday. “There should be a consensus authority during a definite transitional phase to decide every political dispute,” he was quoted as saying. “Iran does not have any role in our sovereign decisions and we are not tools in anyone’s hands.”

In a further sign of goodwill, he said on his Facebook page that his group had received 30 prisoners from the government side.

“This represents the best opportunity to end the war since it started — real progress has been made,” said Adam Baron, a visiting fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The fate of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s president of 33 years who was ousted by “Arab Spring” protests in 2012 and who has formed an alliance with the Houthis, remains unclear and could complicate transition plans.

While Saleh’s party will take part in the talks, the former leader has refused to leave Yemen’s political scene. “There is a slew of potential spoilers. The past year has seen a proliferation of warlords whose power is tied to the conflict continuing,” added Baron.