Yemeni warring parties attending UN-sponsored peace talks are closer to resolving two additional issues concerning confidence-building measures, hoping to log more progress after achieving a breakthrough in a prisoner swap.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres will attend the final day of talks to support efforts to launch a political process that would end the nearly four-year-old war.
Gueterres called Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to discuss Yemen, Saudi state news agency reported.
The Crown Prince, for his part, reaffirmed his country's support for UN efforts exerted to reach a political solution for the Yemeni crisis and looked forward to positive results being announced following the talks.
Another round of talks could be held in early 2019.
The Yemeni government delegation and Houthis on Wednesday had agreed to reopen the airport in Sanaa for domestic flights, one of the confidence-building steps under discussion at the talks in Sweden, sources familiar with the consultations said.
As reported by Reuters, the two sides also agreed to resume oil and gas exports. But Houthis and the Yemeni government are still discussing a UN proposal on the contested port city of Hodeidah.
Yemeni Premier Maeen Abdulmalik told reporters in the government’s base in the southern port of Aden that there might not be enough time for full agreement on Hodeidah as the talks, the first in over two years, conclude on Thursday.
“We talked about (it) a lot but with the limited time we have, we can’t talk about all the points in this round. The important thing is to build confidence and then go into the details of the Hodeidah file,” he said.
The UN-held meetings are picking up pace, with progress being registered with both the Sanaa airport and prisoner swap issues.
“Both sides have been delivered a package of agreements that summarize outcomes of intensive meetings, and we hope to receive positive responses,” Hanan al-Badawi, media director at the office of the UN envoy to Yemen, told Asharq Al-Awsat.
The government delegation handed over its response to UN envoy Martin Griffiths, an insider source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the daily.
Yemeni sources said the war-torn country’s collapsing economy has high chances of being addressed on the list of outcomes of the consultations.
