Yemen: Ansarullah, Saudi-backed delegation meet for 2nd day

Representatives of Yemeni warring parties, the Ansarullah movement and the country’s former Saudi-backed government, have held their second session of talks in Jordan in an attempt to thrash out the details of a major prisoner swap, a UN source says.

Last Month, the two sides signed an agreement for a partial ceasefire at the end of UN-brokered peace negotiations, mediated by Martin Griffiths, the UN special envoy for Yemen, in Rimbo, north of the Swedish capital Stockholm.

According to the agreement, the Ansarullah fighters, who are in control of the port city of Hudaydah, and former president Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi’s allied militia together with Saudi-led forces — who have placed the city under a tight siege since June — must withdraw from the port and hand it over to UN observers.

The two sides further agreed to exchange prisoners of war and issued a statement of understanding on the southwestern city of Ta’izz, another flashpoint area in the war-ravaged country.

As for the prisoner swap, Jordan hosted a round of talks between the warring sides, upon a request from Griffiths, the first session of which was held on Wednesday, when the two sides met separately with the mediators and submitted lists of prisoners they wanted to be released.

On Thursday, the Ansarullah and Hadi’s delegation were expected to meet face-to-face in Amman to hammer out the details of the swap and the circumstances of its implementation.

The two sides reached an agreement on prisoner swap, which could involve up to 15,000 detainees from both sides, in principle as a confidence-building measure ahead of the December negotiations in Sweden.

The second session of talks in Jordan was held a day after the UN Security Council unanimously approved the deployment of up to 75 monitors to oversee the truce in Hudaydah, a lifeline for the delivery of desperately needed humanitarian aid.

According to the UN, the fragile ceasefire has largely held since it came into force in December, but there have been delays in the agreed withdrawal of the Ansarullah and Hadi’s forces.

The limited ceasefire and withdrawal, if implemented, could offer a potential breakthrough in a nearly four-year Saudi-led war that has brought Yemen to the brink of starvation and created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

SS