The warring sides in Yemen’s long conflict have agreed to exchange 1,081 prisoners, the UN mediator said on Sunday following talks in Switzerland.
Yemen’s government, which is supported by a Saudi-led military coalition, and Iran-backed Houthi rebels resolved to swap about 15,000 detainees as part of a peace deal brokered by the UN in Stockholm in 2018.
The two sides have since undertaken sporadic prisoner exchanges, but the release of more than 1,000 loyalists and insurgents — if it materializes — would mark the first large-scale handover since the war erupted in 2014.
“I am personally extremely pleased to be here to announce that you have reached a very important milestone,” UN envoy Martin Griffiths said at the end of the talks at the Swiss village of Glion, overlooking Lake Geneva.
Griffiths hailed the decision to release the prisoners as the largest such operation during Yemen’s conflict.
He also congratulated the government and the Houthis for renewing their “commitment to the full implementation of the Stockholm agreement.”
The Houthi-run Al-Masirah TV channel quoted a rebel source as confirming that a deal had been reached and that both parties “express their commitment to implement the agreement.”
“What matters to us is implementing the deal, not only signing it,” senior rebel commander Mohamed Ali Al-Houthi had wrote on Twitter on Saturday.
Yemeni Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad al-Hadhrami welcomed the deal as a “humanitarian” breakthrough, but also said on Twitter that “the government demands the agreement is implemented without stalling.”
Elisabeth Kendall, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Pembroke College, said the deal was an “important trust-building measure” amid efforts to end the Yemen conflict, but one that would create more animosity if it faltered.
“This step has to be viewed positively, given how polarized the warring sides now are and how intractable the conflict has become,” she told reporters.
However, “there are several reasons to be wary... We have been here several times before. Prisoner swaps are agreed, then they come to nothing and those impacted end up even more frustrated and angry,” Kendall said.
Sources on both sides said that it was to be implemented within two weeks.
The agreement includes the release of “681 rebels and 400 government forces [and allies], among them 15 Saudis and four Sudanese,” a member of the government delegation told reporters.
The talks began on Sept. 18 and had been aimed at securing the release of 1,420 prisoners, including the brother of Yemeni President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi.
Griffiths did not provide details on which prisoners would be exchanged under the agreement reached in Glion.
However, the government official told reporters that the release of General Nasser Mansour Hadi from the hands of the rebels “has been postponed.”
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is to oversee the return of detainees to their families.
Coalition spokesman Turki al-Maliki told reporters in Riyadh that the coalition had “a positive view of the agreement.”
Fabrizio Carboni, head of the ICRC’s Middle East and Near East operations, described the agreement as “a very positive step.”
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