SANAA, 12 September 2004 — Saudi Arabia and Yemen are due to begin talks in Germany tomorrow to discuss plans for adjusting the path of their joint borderline, the Yemeni official Saba news agency said yesterday.
The agency said a Yemeni delegation headed by Commander of the Border Guard Force Col. Abdul-Elah Aatif would represent the country at the meetings in the western German city of Munster.
The meetings are to be hosted by the German firm HansaLuftbild that has installed the landmarks along the 1,845-km border line between the two countries.
The five-day talks would focus on proposals for adjustments on the boundaries in populated areas, Saba said.
Last May, Yemen said the German construction firm had finished demarcating borders with Saudi Arabia under the July 2000 Jeddah Border Treaty.
The head of Yemen’s Technical Bureau for Borders, Dhaifullah Shumaila, said the field works of demarcation had been completely done with a total of 824 marks placed along the borderline. He said the company was expected to draw up border maps by June next year.
Under the Jeddah treaty, the identity of villages located on the borderline is determined according to tribal affiliation to either of the two sides.
Last July, the Kingdom handed over to Yemen 13 locations including a military airport and two border guard centers on Saudi Arabia’s southeastern border which was designated as Yemeni territory under the 2000 treaty.
Political and economic ties between the Kingdom and Yemen have been developing since the two countries signed the Jeddah treaty that ended a 66-year-old border dispute.
Riyadh and Sanaa are working closely to combat cross-border drugs and arms smuggling and infiltration of terrorists. Large quantities of arms and explosives are smuggled through the porous borders from Yemen every year.
