Yemen government and rebels resume talks on prisoner exchanges

UN special envoy calls for serious efforts to move forward with release of detainees under 2018 agreement

The UN special envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg arrives at Sanaa Airport for talks with Houthi leaders in January. EPA

The UN special envoy for Yemen called on representatives of the government and the Iran-backed Houthi rebels to hold “serious” negotiations as a new round of talks on prisoner exchanges began in Geneva on Saturday

The closed-door negotiations, reportedly set to last 11 days, are being overseen by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross.

“I hope the parties are ready to engage in serious and forthcoming discussions to agree on releasing as many detainees as possible,” UN special envoy Hans Grundberg said in a statement released before the talks.

The prisoner exchanges are part of an agreement reached by the government and rebels during talks in Stockholm in December 2018.

Under that deal, the sides agreed “to release all prisoners, detainees, missing persons, arbitrarily detained and forcibly disappeared persons, and those under house arrest”, held in connection with Yemen's nearly decade-long conflict, “without any exceptions or conditions”.

The ICRC noted that past meetings mediated by Mr Grundberg's office had “resulted in the release of prisoners on both sides”.

“In 2020, more than 1,050 detainees were released and provided with transportation to their region of origin or home country following an agreement reached by the sides,” it said in a statement to AFP.

The seventh round of talks on prisoner releases comes almost a year after the Houthis said they had agreed to a swap that would see 1,400 rebels freed in exchange for 823 pro-government fighters — including 16 Saudis and three Sudanese nationals.

But there has been no further progress despite a series of meetings in the Jordanian capital, Amman.

“The ICRC is committed to supporting the implementation of future detainee releases and exchanges, and to repatriating or transferring released detainees across front lines back to their respective homes,” the organisation said.

Emphasising that it was “a neutral intermediary in this process”, the ICRC said it was “not involved in the negotiations on who exactly is going to be released and the identities of the detainees proposed and accepted for exchange by all concerned parties”.

Speaking to the official Saba news agency on Thursday, Yemeni government delegation member Majed Fadail said the aim of the talks was “to reach an understanding regarding the details” of a prisoner exchange.

In a Twitter post that day, the leading Houthi delegate to the Geneva talks said he hoped the negotiations would yield concrete results.

“We hope that this round will be a decisive one,” Abdul Qader Al Murtada said.

Mr Grundberg said it was urgent to reach an agreement.

“With Ramadan approaching, I urge the parties to fulfil the commitments they made, not just to each other, but also to the thousands of Yemeni families who have been waiting to be reunited with their loved ones for far too long,” he said.

Saturday's talks began a day after Saudi Arabia and Iran said they had agreed to restore diplomatic relations, following years of supporting opposite sides during Yemen's more than eight years of war.

A detente between the two regional heavyweights could facilitate a solution to the conflict, which has pitted the Iran-backed Houthis against the internationally-recognised Yemeni government supported by Saudi Arabia, analysts say.

The Houthis took control of the Yemeni capital, Sanaa, in 2014, prompting a Saudi-led coalition to intervene on behalf of the Yemeni government the following year.

Since then, the grinding conflict has killed thousands and pushed the Gulf region's poorest nation to the brink of famine.

Fighting has largely been on hold since a UN-brokered ceasefire took effect in April last year, even after the agreement expired in October.

With reporting from AFP