Radio Erena: 10 December 2014
Eritrea and Djibouti are likely to exchange their Prisoners-of-War [POW] in the beginning of 2015, reported Radio Erena sources from the Eritrean capital of Asmara.
According to the sources, Qatar is pressuring Eritrea to either release the 17 Djiboutian POW’sit has been holding without any information to Djibouti or give the Red Cross or other organization access to the POW’s.
The Qatari Foreign Minister, in his lastanundisclosedweek’svisittoEritrea was reported to have discussed the issue, which is also reported to be the core of the talks between President Isaias Afwerki and Amir Altamim Bin Hamad Altani in Doha, Qatar that began this past Monday.
While the Arab-league-member-state of Djibouti has officially stated capturing 19 Eritrean soldiers and that Eritrea had captured 17 of its soldiers in the conflict that erupted in 2008 at Cape Doumeira [Ras Dumera], Eritrea has never officially published any statement on the topic.
Since Qatar took the initiative to mediate the two countries and deploy a small number of Qatari peace-keeping forces to ease the hostilities between the counties, they have continuously been discussing on the exchange of their POW’snotbeen.movingHowever, forward as anticipated. And Djibouti accuses Eritrea for the stalemate on the peace process for not disclosing full information on its POW’s.
It is to be remembered that Qatar had also facilitated the release of a Djiboutian military officer from Eritrea two weeks following his capture after he was allegedly found across the Eritrean territories.
Citing the intensity of the talks between the two conflicting countries under the auspicious of Qatar, Erena Radio sources further stated that the exchanging of POW’sbetween the two countries seems inevitable.
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