RIMBO: Yemen’s government and Ansar Allah agreed on Tuesday on a mass prisoner swap, exchanging more than 16,000 names, but warned that talks this week were unlikely to yield a truce.
Nearly four years into a war that has pushed 14 million Yemenis to the brink of mass starvation, the government of Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and Ansar Allah have been in UN-brokered talks since Thursday in the rural town of Rimbo in Sweden.
While the Sweden talks do not aim to broker an official ceasefire, both parties have come under intense international and UN pressure to reach a truce.
Mediators are pushing for a de-escalation of violence in two flashpoint cities: Hodeida, a port city vital to the delivery of humanitarian aid, and Taiz, Yemen’s third largest city, scene of some of the most intense fighting of the war.
SALEH NAMED IN SWAP
The Sweden talks are the first meeting between the two parties in the Yemen conflict in more than two years. The last
round of talks, in 2016, collapsed after more than three months of negotiations.
Brokered by UN special envoy Martin Griffiths earlier this month, the prisoner swap was one of the main points — and the least contentious — at this week’s talks.
It is the largest prisoner exchange between the rival parties since the outbreak of the Yemen war.
Askar Zaeel, a government negotiator on the prisoner swap, said the rebels had named 7,487 detainees whom they were willing to release. The government had named 8,576 detainees, Zaeel said.
Ansar Allah negotiator Abdelkader Mourtada confirmed a total of more than 16,000 prisoners and detainees had been named in the swap. He did not give further details.
Zaeel said the government demanded Ansar Allah hand over the body of Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen’s former president who was killed at the hands of the fighters after he broke a fragile alliance with them.
Both parties said the exchange should be complete by January 19, pending final revisions of the lists.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed it will oversee the exchange.
NO TRUCE
The government on Tuesday ruled out a truce, one day after the pro-government military coalition said military operations were ongoing in Hodeida.
The government alliance launched an offensive to retake the city in June, sparking an international outcry over the fate of its 600,000 residents and a port crucial for food imports.
“This has been proposed as part of the general framework, and this is what we came to make progress on: a full, complete ceasefire. But I think we will be unable to achieve this progress in this round,” Yemeni government delegate Askar Zaeel said.
“This is a round of talks to prepare for that.” More than 10,000 people have been killed in the war triggering what the UN calls the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.
Both parties stand accused of failing to protect civilians. The Sweden talks are expected to close on
Thursday. — AFP
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