SANAA, 11 June 2004 — The Kingdom will next month hand over a number of installations in border areas designated Yemeni territory under the 2000 Jeddah treaty, Yemeni official sources said yesterday.
The sources said the handover of the border sites to Yemen was agreed on by a joint military panel last month in Sanaa.
According to the 26 September weekly Defense Ministry newspaper, Yemeni authorities would begin to take over the border sites on July 11.
The move is in line with a border treaty signed by the two countries in June 2000 ending a 66-year-old border dispute.
Among the sites to be handed over by the Kingdom will be a remote airport on the southeastern Saudi border, the paper said, adding the military committee set a timeline for the handover.
It was not clear whether the Kingdom would also gain sites from Yemen.
Demarcation of the Kingdom’s 1,845-kilometer border with Yemen was completed last month after 824 markers were put in place.
Yemeni officials have said that a German company demarcating the border would complete drawing up border maps by June next year.
Political and economic ties between the Kingdom and Yemen have been developing since the two countries signed the Jeddah treaty.
Riyadh and Sanaa are working closely to combat cross-border drug and arms smuggling and infiltration of terrorists. Large quantities of arms and explosives are smuggled through the porous border from Yemen every year.
