BEIRUT, Lebanon — The coronavirus pandemic may help end one of the world’s nastiest wars.

That hope appeared this week when the main combatants in Yemen, the poorest Arab country, laid out their visions of the path toward peace.

Saudi Arabia on Wednesday announced a unilateral cease-fire to allow for talks and prevent the spread of the coronavirus. Almost simultaneously, the Houthi rebels who control the Yemeni capital unveiled their own eight-page peace plan. The United Nations, which has been struggling for years to quell Yemen’s violence, hopes to convene talks between them as early as next week.

It all sounds like progress, but analysts and diplomats who track Yemen said the distance between the warring sides’ positions and the barriers that need to be cleared are so great that the new moves were — at best — opening gambits.

The war has generated incalculable human suffering since the Saudi-led bombing and blockading of Yemen began in 2015. Tens of thousands of people have died, towns and cities have been destroyed, poverty has spread and diseases like cholera have proved hard to beat because the country’s medical system has been dismantled and many people lack clean water.