The Saudi-led coalition has commended an agreement recently reached by the Yemeni warring sides on the exchange of 1,081 detainees in line with the 2018 Stockholm peace treaty, a spokesman for the coalition, Col. Turki al-Maliki, has said
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th September, 2020) The Saudi-led coalition has commended an agreement recently reached by the Yemeni warring sides on the exchange of 1,081 detainees in line with the 2018 Stockholm peace treaty, a spokesman for the coalition, Col. Turki al-Maliki, has said.
On Sunday, a joint statement by UN Special Envoy to Yemen Martin Griffiths and the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) revealed that the Yemeni legitimate government and the Shia rebel Houthi movement had reached a consensus on the exchange of 1,081 prisoners after week-long talks on the implementation of the Prisoners' Exchange Agreement in Switzerland.
"The leadership of the coalition's joint forces has expressed its sincere thanks to the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary General, as well as to the ICRC, for the efforts undertaken in regard with the Prisoners' Agreement, which is a part of what has been agreed upon in Stockholm. ... There will be an exchange of 1,081 prisoners, with the government releasing 681 of them and the other side - 400, including 15 Saudi servicemen and four from the Sudanese forces," al-Maliki said, as quoted by the state-run Saudi Press Agency.
The spokesman highlighted that the prisoners' issue was a priority for Saudi Arabia's political and military high-level officials, as well as for members of the US-backed Arab coalition.
For over five years, Yemen has been engulfed in an armed confrontation between the government forces, led by President Abdrabbuh Mansour Hadi, and Houthi rebels. The situation has complicated when the Saudi-led coalition intervened in the conflict in 2015 and began carrying out hostilities against the rebels in support for Yemen's legitimate authorities.
In December 2018, the belligerents signed in Sweden an UN-sponsored peace accord to ease tensions in the war-torn nation, under which the sides agreed to a ceasefire in Yemen's port of Al Hudaydah, the exchange of around 15,000 individuals and the establishment of humanitarian corridors in the area.
