THE UNITED NATIONS warned on Tuesday that 7.6 million Yemenis were “one step” from famine as the Saudi-backed civil war faction walked out of peace talks.

Ousted president Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi’s foreign minister Abdul-Malik al-Mekhlafi said his delegation had left the talks in Kuwait over presidential pretender Ali Abdullah Saleh’s insistence on a power-sharing government.

The Saleh delegation also objected to the Hadi team’s controversial nomination of fugitive Major General Ali Mohsen al-Ahmar to head the proposed transitional military committee.