Eritrea starts withdrawing from the Yemeni Islands Henaish

An Eritrean official source in Cairo announced today that his country's forces have started to withdraw from the Hanish Islands after the decision of an international court for arbitration that delivered the islands to Yemen.

Yemen and Eritrea had authorized French forces to supervise matters in the Hanish Islands, while they waited for the arbitrator's decision.

Yemeni President Ali Abdallah Saleh received a phone call from Eritrean President Assias Afworki, who assured that his country is committed to implementing the decision.

He said his country trusts the Yemeni government and it considers the role played by Yemen in Eritrean independence as historical, adding that it will not be erased from the memory of history.

He added that the leaders in the two countries can not undertake anything against the will of the two peoples.

Yemeni Prime Minister Abdul Karim al-Iryani said the decision concerning the dispute over several groups of Red Sea islands helped resolve the issue of specifying marine borders with Eritrea, because the decision has first assured Yemeni sovereignty over the Hanish Islands, which will be the basis for specifying marine extensions, then for specifying borders and closing the arbitration file completely between the two countries.

Yemeni sources said that during the first stage of arbitration, Yemen made use of international legal consultative bureaus, international law experts from Yemen, Arab and foreign states. Yemen also collected thousands of maps, documents, agreements from Yemeni and foreign sides, in addition to the archives of the Yemeni Foreign Ministry and Turkish, Italian, British, Egyptian and US libraries.