A United Nations special envoy told Yemen on Tuesday that the rapid implementation of the prisoner’s swap deal would help the advanced efforts in the political settlement ending nearly four-year-old Yemen war crisis.
According to Reuters news reports, the UN envoy Martin Griffiths said the process of finalizing the list of thousands of prisoners would get completed by the end of a three-day dialogue between official teams from Saudi Arabia-backed government and Iranian-aligned Houthi advisors in Amman. The final list would be handed over to the world body and the ICRC, the International Committee of the Red Cross.
Before beginning the second round of meeting, Griffiths told delegates that “it will lay the basis for the next step which will be to see that release happening.”
He further stressed over how crucial is the swap deal was in order to achieve progress putting an end to a conflict in Yemen that has led to the murder of tens of thousands of people and left with 15.9 million citizens facing severe hunger and crisis.
Griffith said: “Success in this regard is not only of huge importance for those who will be released … but also for the broader political process in which we have hopes the parties will together resolve the issues that divide them and return Yemen to peace.”
The US sources conceded snags that hit the timeline for the swap deal implementation including a main risk to the UN peace drive a stalled military troop withdrawal from Hodeidah, the main port of Yemen.
The Amman prisoner negotiations will be verifying the names of around 15,000 prisoners exchanged by both the sides, which includes some Saudis as well as other nationals.
The head of ICRC would oversee the whole operation. Implementing the deal would take about three weeks and will also involve the return of their country nationals.
At the start of the talks, the ICRC president Peter Maurer told the two warning Yemenis: “Trust doesn’t come from one day to another. It is a difficult process and we know this is work in progress.”