The general overseeing US military operations in the Middle East visited war-torn Yemen's chief of staff in the de facto capital Aden on Wednesday, state media said, a day ahead of peace talks in Geneva.
US Central Command head General Joseph Votel met Major General Taher al-Aqili to discuss developing Yemen's coast guard, navy and special forces to "tackle the threat of terrorist militias and fight smuggling," the Saba news agency said.
The two also discussed the government's "efforts to restore the state and put an end to the coup by the Iran-backed Huthi militia", it said, referring to rebels who ousted the government from the capital Sanaa and large parts of Yemen in 2014.
The US provides weapons, aerial refuelling to jets, intelligence and targeting information to the Saudi-led coalition that is fighting Huthi rebels in Yemen.
Votel's visit followed meetings in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the main players in a military coalition set up in 2015 to back Yemen's government in its fight against the Huthis.
Defence Secretary Jim Mattis said last week that US support for the coalition was not "unconditional" as he defended America's ongoing role in the war.
His comments came as UN investigators said they had reasonable grounds to believe warring parties in Yemen had committed violations of humanitarian law that could amount to "war crimes".
Washington has also carried out a long-running drone war against Yemen's Al-Qaeda branch, which took advantage of the chaos created by the war to strengthen its own operations, particularly in the country's south.
The Pentagon sees Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula as the jihadist network's most dangerous branch.
It has intensified its strikes against AQAP since President Donald Trump took office in 2017.
The United Nations is set to host rebel and government delegations for indirect talks in Geneva on Thursday in a bid to revive formal negotiations.
But the rebels said Wednesday that they were stranded in Sanaa because the coalition, which controls Yemen's airspace, had not given their UN plane permission to fly.