Early on Friday, the US embassy in Sanaa shifted from its months of silence on Sharif, who has been unavailable to his lawyers since 27 February.
Hadi fled in March, after the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels seized the capital Sanaa in September and then thrust into central and south Yemen.
Yemeni politicians who met Ould Cheikh Ahmed in Sanaa on Saturday said he had informed them that "indirect talks" were underway in Muscat between the Houthi delegation and US officials through Omani mediation.
Eight years after its victory in the civil war that followed unification, Sanaa has yet to win the loyalty of its southern citizens.
And it says it has expelled more than 20,000 Afghan Arabs.So far there has been remarkably little resistance, the odd explosion outside the American embassy in Sanaa and the prime minister's home notwithstanding.
For fear of reprisal, the Americans this week closed their embassy in Sanaa to the public.
It is why citizens in Tunis and Sanaa are queuing to donate blood for Palestine.
This ambivalence pervades her work.Having studied in America, Ms Almutawakel has returned to live and work in Sanaa in Yemen.
Every building in Sanaa is draped with Yemen's red, white and black flag to mark this democratic event.
Two-thirds of the senior posts in Aden, grouches the newspaper, are in northern hands, including that of the chief of police, who is ensconced in the British ambassador's former residence.The southern furore has not gone down well in Sanaa, the mountainous Yemeni capital, 345km (215 miles) to the north.
But Sanaa Said, a doctor at Mnazi Mmoja Hospital on the island, says that most patients who complain of headaches and fevers are nonethless still treated for malaria.
