Yemeni President addresses the nation from Riyadh

Yemeni President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi has urged southern separatists to return to the terms of the Riyadh agreement signed last November.

Recently, fierce fighting has continued in southern Yemen between Emirati-backed separatists and the country's internationally recognized government, according to security officials, in a blow to the Saudi-led coalition's declared ceasefire between the factions.

The Saudi-led coalition, which is mired in a years-long conflict with Iranian-supported rebel Houthis, said earlier this week that the separatist and government forces had reached a truce.

The agreement aims to close the rift between Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, powerful regional allies in the U.S.-backed Arab coalition against the Houthis.

The Riyadh deal, signed in November 2019, ended earlier fighting between the separatists and the government forces — ostensible allies in the war against the Houthis — after the separatists' Southern Transitional Council seized control of Aden just a few months earlier.

That deal had called for both sides to remove heavy military equipment from Yemeni cities under their control and form a unity government that included equal representation.

Hadi said returning to the agreement would "(unite) efforts to confront the Houthi coup and assimilate everyone in the framework of the state and its military, security and civil institutions."

He added that "resorting to arms and strength to achieve personal gains, or passing factional, regional or partisan projects will not be acceptable, nor will it achieve its goals."

The secessionist council, which is an umbrella group of heavily armed and well-financed militias propped up by the United Arab Emirates since 2015, hopes to restore an independent southern Yemen, which existed from 1967 until unification in 1990.

Saudi Arabia supports the internationally recognized government of President Abed Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who was driven into exile in 2015 when Houthi rebels seized the capital, Sanaa, and much of the country's north.

The ensuing war has killed over 112,000 people, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, and set off what the U.N. has labeled the world's worst humanitarian crisis.