GENEVA, Sept. 9 (Xinhua) -- The UN-backed Yemen peace talks in Geneva have ended early due to the lack of representation from the Houthi movement.

"We just couldn’t make it," said UN envoy Martin Griffiths.

The talks were scheduled to last five days but were cut short after only representatives from Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi’s delegation turned up.

Before leaving for Geneva, the Houthis wanted a number of conditions met, including the transport of wounded rebels to Oman and a guarantee that the Houthi delegation would be allowed to return to the rebel-held capital Sanaa after the talks.

UN-brokered peace talks in 2016 collapsed after 108 days of negotiations produced no deal.

But there was a "flickering" amount of hope that this round might lead towards the rebuilding of trust between the two warring sides.

According to Griffiths, the talks were meant to be informal and focus on how formal peace negotiations would work. The substance would come later.

Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani called the Houthis absence a "huge mistake," adding that he believed a dispute within the movement on who should represent them in Geneva was also to blame.

In the last three years, more than 10,000 people have been killed and 8.5 million pushed to the brink of starvation in what has become what the UN says the world’s worst humanitarian disaster.