Arab League Secretary-General Ahmed Aboul Gheit welcomed on Monday an agreement reached between the legitimate government and Houthi militias to implement a prisoner swap deal, a week after resuming talks over the issue in Amman.

Aboul Gheit applauded the UN's ongoing efforts to ink this deal and hoped the agreement would help de-escalate military tension in Yemen and end the woes of the Yemeni people.

The Secretary-General was speaking during a meeting with United Nation's special envoy to Yemen, Martin Griffiths, at the AL headquarters in Cairo.

On Sunday, the UN and Yemeni sources confirmed that an agreement over a swap deal between the Yemeni sides should finally lead to the release of all prisoners.

Yemeni Undersecretary of Ministry of Human Rights Majed Fada'el told Asharq Al-Awsat that the first phase of the prisoner exchange deal includes releasing 1,420 prisoners and detainees, involving Saudis and Sudanese, in addition to one of four prisoners included in UNSC Resolution 2216.

He said the first stage of the detainees’ release should begin in the next few days and would continue for a month until all prisoners are freed.

Fada’el said a second meeting should be later held to discuss the next phases of the agreement.

"There is another meeting expected to be held one month later to coordinate about the arrangements for the second phase of prisoner-exchange,” he said, adding that the deal is not new, but it completes the Stockholm Agreement.

Fada’el said there is no planned sanction on the party obstructing the implementation of the deal.

A joint statement by Griffiths and the ICRC over the outcome of the third meeting of prisoners’ exchange committee said last week that delegates representing the parties to the conflict in Yemen agreed on a detailed plan to complete the first official large-scale exchange of prisoners since the beginning of the conflict.