SANAA: The party of Yemen’s former President Ali Abdullah Saleh, a key ally of Houthi rebels, Tuesday welcomed U.N.-brokered peace talks due to open in Switzerland at the weekend.

The General People’s Congress said it had not yet received a formal invitation from the United Nations but the U.N. envoy met with party representatives in the rebel-held capital in late May as part of his efforts to convene the Geneva talks.

Saleh himself is under U.N. sanctions for his support for the rebels and did not take part in the meetings, party sources said.

The GPC “welcomes holding the Geneva conference for consultations between Yemeni political components without any preconditions from any group, with goodwill and under the patronage of the United Nations,” its website said.

Saleh himself proposed Geneva as the venue for the talks as a compromise between rebel-held Sanaa and the Saudi capital Riyadh, where exiled President Abed Rabbou Mansour Hadi has taken refuge.

Coalition airstrikes Tuesday hit pro-Saleh troops and rebels across the capital before dawn, witnesses said.

Plumes of smoke were seen rising from the Defense Ministry which they jointly control.

Residents also reported airstrikes in third city Taiz and the eastern oil province of Marib and in the rebel heartland in Yemen’s far north. In the south, fierce clashes continued on the northern and western outskirts of Aden, Yemen’s second largest city.

In Dhalea, eight southern fighters were killed when coalition warplanes mistakenly hit a military post overrun by the pro-government fighters, according to a source in the Popular Resistance group.

The peace talks are due to open in Geneva Sunday afternoon.

They will last two to three days and be held mostly behind closed doors, according to U.N. spokesman Ahmad Fawzi.