Local Editor
The Saudi-backed resigned regime and Yemen’s Houthi Ansarullah movement announced on Tuesday plans for a mass prisoner swap, exchanging over 15,000 names, as UN-brokered talks on ending the country's war entered their seventh day.
The warring parties' two lists contain a combined total of around 16,000 names, according to delegates at the peace talks in Sweden. But the Houthi rebels announced the names of a total of 15,000 detainees and prisoners to be exchanged.
Brokered by UN special envoy Martin Griffiths earlier this month, it is one of the main points at talks between the resigned regime and Houthi movement in Sweden this week.
Later on Tuesday, Askar Zaeel, a resigned regime negotiator on the prisoner swap, said the Houthi had named 7,687 detainees whom they were willing to release. The resigned regime had named 8,576 detainees, Zaeel said.
Zaeel told AFP the regime demanded the Houthis hand over the body of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's former president.
Both parties have two weeks to revise the list of names.
Prisoners will be flown out through two airports: regime-held Seyoun, in central Yemen, and the Houthi-held capital Sana’a, home to an international airport that has been largely shut down for three years.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed it will oversee the exchange.
Griffiths told media on Monday the prisoner swap was well underway, adding that he hoped it "will be very very considerable in terms of the numbers that we hope to get released within a few weeks".
Also on Monday, Haid Haig, head of the Hadi delegation tasked with the swap, said the deal would be fully implemented by the end of January.
"We agreed ... the deal would be complete within 48 days," Haig said.
Asked when he expected the exchange to be complete, he replied: "In theory, in January."
On Tuesday, Griffiths reported progress on a number of issues.
Besides the prisoner exchange, Griffiths said the two parties have been discussing the details of re-opening Sana;a airport, the de-escalation measures in both Yemeni port city of Hodeida and Taiz as well as the country's economic situation.
Nearly four years into a war that has pushed 14 million Yemenis to the brink of mass starvation, the Riyadh-backed resigned regime of Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi and Houthi revolutionaries, began talks on Thursday in the rural town of Rimbo in Sweden.
UN officials expect the talks will last a week.
Source: News Agencies, Edited by Website Team
