Ethiopia PM holds first post-peace deal meeting with Tigray leaders

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Friday held his first face-to-face meeting with Tigrayan leaders since a peace deal was agreed last year, officials and state media said.

The talks took place almost three months to the day since the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) signed an agreement to silence the guns after two years of brutal war.

Abiy’s national security adviser Redwan Hussein said on Twitter that the prime minister and other officials met a TPLF delegation “regarding the progress of the peace process”.

“As a result, PM Abiy passed decisions about increasing Flights, Banking & other issues that would boost trust & ease lives of civilians,” he tweeted.

State media said it was the first time Abiy had joined the so-called Peace Agreement Implementation Coordination Committee set up after the November 2 breakthrough deal signed in the South African capital Pretoria.

Those attending included Ethiopian Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Demeke Mekonnen and armed forces chief Birhanu Jula, along with top Tigrayan military commander Tsadkan Gebretensae and TPLF spokesman Getachew Reda, pictures on state media showed.

Getachew said in an interview with the state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation that the discussions covered the opening up of the banking sector and land transport to Tigray.

“Both on the part of the (Tigrayan) leadership and the Tigrayan people, there’s no interest in a return to war,” he added.

The two sides evaluated “actions carried out on the implementation of the Pretoria and Nairobi peace agreements so far”, the EBC said, referring to a followup deal hammered out in the Kenyan capital on Nov 12.

They also discussed issues that “need further attention,” it said, adding that the meeting took place at a resort in southern Ethiopia.

The devastating conflict that erupted in November 2020 has killed untold numbers of civilians, displaced more than two million and left millions more in need of humanitarian aid.

Under the terms of the November agreements, the TPLF agreed to disarm and re-establish the authority of the federal government in return for the restoration of access to Tigray, which was largely cut off from the outside world during the war.

Since the deal, there has been some resumption of aid deliveries to Tigray, which has long faced dire shortages of food, fuel, cash and medicines.

Basic services such as communications, banking and electricity are slowly being restored to the stricken region of six million people, with national carrier Ethiopian Airlines resuming commercial flights between Addis Ababa and Tigray’s capital Mekele last month.

The war began after Abiy, who won the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize in part for rapprochement with Eritrea, sent troops into Tigray, accusing the TPLF of attacking army bases there.

The United States has said the death toll from the conflict could be as high as 500,000 while African Union envoy Olusegun Obasanjo has put it at up to 600,000.

Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK