The Yemeni Foreign Minister Khaled al-Yamani, the Yemeni foreign minister, has started the implementation of the agreement by confirming his country's refusal to have any international forces permanently in Yemen, according to what was discussed with the United Nations during the Swedish talks.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan's spokesman Stephane Dujarric told a news conference in New York that the Co-ordinating Committee for Redeployment, the joint committee responsible for implementing the Hodeidah Accord, would immediately begin work immediately to shift the momentum from Sweden's talks into reality.
Dujarric added that the commission is not a UN peacekeeping force, noting that UN monitoring of the ceasefire comes within the mandate of UN envoy to Yemen Martin Griffith.
| Gunmen Houthi on a tour of the city of Hodeidah (Reuters) |
International experts
In a related context, UN sources confirmed to Al Jazeera correspondent that a team of international experts will arrive in Hodeidah on Wednesday to assess the field and logistical needs of the work of the Observer Group.
The sources spoke of the aspiration of the United Nations Secretariat to support the UN Security Council to organize and work of the Observer Group through the British draft resolution currently under discussion on Yemen.
The Yemeni government and the Houthis agreed on the file of prisoners and Hodeidah last Thursday and reached understandings on the Taiz file, while the two sides failed to reach understandings in the economic, central bank and Sana'a airport.
A spokesman for the Houthi group, Mohamed Abdel Salam, said the group confirmed its commitment to the agreement to stop military operations in Hodeidah and the truce in the city of Taiz in western Yemen.
Sweden Agreement
The positions of the parties to the Swedish agreement on Hodeidah have varied over some of its provisions, namely with respect to the administration and port of the city, where each party asserts that the management of the port will be transferred to related parties.
The outskirts of Hodeidah and other locations in the province have seen clashes between government forces and Houthis, although the Swedish agreement provides for an immediate ceasefire.
In a related context, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Bahram Qasimi expressed the hope that the recent Yemeni talks in Sweden will start a major and important shift to end the suffering of the Yemeni people. Qasimi said his country supports the talks in Sweden, calling for the Yemeni crisis to be an example of what the aggressors called.