CAN'T LOSE WHAT YOU NEVER HAD:

Hadi still enjoys support in parts of Yemen, especially the south. That's being eroded, as Yemenis on the ground view him as endorsing prolonged airstrikes amid severe food and fuel shortages, said Farea al-Muslimi, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Middle East Center in Beirut.

The Riyadh meeting "is simply irrelevant to everything," al-Muslimi said. It will make Hadi more unpopular, because "you're going on TV and asking the world to keep bombing your country."

The United Nations World Food Programme said on Tuesday that the five-day cease-fire wasn't long enough to reach all those needing aid, and called for regular "predictable pauses." The UN estimates that 1,820 people have been killed and more than half a million displaced since March.

Follow @brothersjudd