Under the auspices of the office of the UN envoy to Yemen, Hans Grundberg, and the International Committee of the Red Cross, Muscat hosted on Sunday consultations between the internationally-recognized Yemeni government and the Houthi group over the exchange of prisoners, detainees and forcibly disappeared persons.
Majed Fadael, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Human Rights and the official spokesman for the government delegation, expected that the consultations would continue for about 10 days.
In exclusive statements to Asharq Al-Awsat, he said: “Our basic demand is the release of all prisoners and abductees without discrimination...”
He continued: “We have clear and frank directives from our political leadership regarding this, and that the government delegation deal with full responsibility and commitment to this humanitarian file.”
During the past years, the United Nations, in cooperation with the International Committee of the Red Cross, succeeded in completing two exchange deals between the two warring sides. More than a thousand persons were released in the first swap deal and around 900 in the second.
For his part, Abdul Qadir Al-Murtada, head of the Houthi delegation, expressed his hope that the round of consultations would be “successful, and that a new exchange deal would be agreed upon.”
He wrote on his X account: “We arrived in the Omani capital, Muscat, to attend a new round of negotiations on the prisoner file, under the auspices of the United Nations, and we hope that it will be successful and that a new exchange deal will be reached.”
In turn, the Presidential Leadership Council affirmed its keenness and support for the efforts and endeavors aimed at ending the suffering of detainees, kidnapped and disappeared persons.
