Yemen is to launch a fresh attempt to negotiate the surrender of a rebel Muslim preacher whose supporters have been locked in a deadly five-week battle with the army in the north, a source involved in the effort said.
At the behest of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a group of opposition leaders, clerics and tribal chiefs will on Wednesday return to the Maran area in Saada province, where Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi and thousands of his supporters are besieged, the source told AFP.
Mediation efforts last month failed to resolve ongoing clashes between Huthi's men and the army. An MP involved in the aborted talks accused elements within the army of undermining efforts to end the crisis peacefully.
The newly formed group will try to persuade Huthi to turn himself him with the guarantee that he will be judged fairly, the source said.
The group includes Huthi's brother Yahya, who is an MP, and Abdul Karim Jadban, a co-founder of Huthi's "Faithful Youth" organisation, formed in 1997 as a breakaway from the Islamist opposition movement Al-Haq.
Sanaa will "request that the military command on the ground cease operations to help the new mission to reach Huthi and his supporters" in their stronghold, the source added.
However the launch of the mediation effort did not stop the Yemeni authorities starting legal proceedings against a senior judge accused of supporting Huthi's uprising.
Mohammed Lokman, who heads a court in the western region of Haraz, was formally charged with "inciting armed insurrection", "inciting civil disobedience" and "calling for the replacement of the republican regime with an imamate (a Shiite Muslim theocracy)" at the opening of his trial in Sanaa.
Lokman, who was stripped of his judicial immunity on July 10, was represented by some 20 counsel, including the head of the lawyers' union Abdullah Rajah, an AFP correspondent in court witnessed.
Judge Mohsen Alwan adjourned the trial until Sunday.
The clashes between the army and Huthi's supporters has so far left some 300 people dead.
Huthi, a preacher from the Zaidi community -- a moderate Shiite sect --- told AFP last week that the conflict was a result of his anti-US stand and accused Saleh of seeking "to please the United States at the expense of his own people."