Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki reopened his nation’s embassy in Ethiopia yesterday, more than 20 years after the two countries broke off relations when they went to war.
The embassy inauguration caps Isaias’ historic visit to the Ethiopian capital aimed at cementing peace less than a week after the two nations declared an end to two decades of conflict.
State-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corp (EBC) showed Isaias raising the Eritrean flag at the embassy in downtown Addis Ababa and accepting from Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed keys to the building, filled with dusty furniture that appeared untouched for years.
Photo: AP
The embassy visit marked the end of the Eritrean leader’s three-day stay in Ethiopia that also included a visit to an industrial park and a Sunday evening dinner and concert attended by thousands of Ethiopians.
“The high-level Eritrean government delegation headed by President Isaias just left Addis Ababa for Asmara,” EBC reported after Isaias departed the embassy.
Ethiopia and Eritrea expelled each other’s envoys at the start of a 1998 to 2000 border war that killed about 80,000 people.
Relations remained frozen after Ethiopia declined to accept a 2002 UN-backed border demarcation, leading to years of cold war between the two nations.
Last month, Abiy announced Ethiopia would accept the demarcation and cede land to Eritrea, paving the way for normalization.
Abiy has pursued an aggressive reform agenda since taking office in April, including making peace with Eritrea, releasing jailed dissidents and liberalizing parts of the economy.
Once a province of Ethiopia, Eritrea voted to leave in 1993 after a bloody, decades-long independence struggle.
Since the end of the war, Isaias has used the threat of Ethiopia aggression to justify a rash of repressive policies, including an indefinite national service program the UN has likened to slavery.
Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Meles Alem said that Ethiopia has not yet reopened its embassy in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
Thailand has netted more than 1.3 million kilograms of highly destructive blackchin tilapia fish, the government said yesterday, as it battles to stamp out the invasive species. Shoals of blackchin tilapia, which can produce up to 500 young at a time, have been found in 19 provinces, damaging ecosystems in rivers, swamps and canals by preying on small fish, shrimp and snail larvae. As well as the ecological impact, the government is worried about the effect on the kingdom’s crucial fish-farming industry. Fishing authorities caught 1,332,000kg of blackchin tilapia from February to Wednesday last week, said Nattacha Boonchaiinsawat, vice president of a parliamentary
A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious
DEFIANT: Ukraine and the EU voiced concern that ICC member Mongolia might not execute an international warrant for Putin’s arrest over war crimes in Ukraine Russian President Vladimir Putin was yesterday visiting Mongolia with no sign that the host country would bow to calls to arrest him on an international warrant for alleged war crimes stemming from the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The trip is Putin’s first to a member country of the International Criminal Court (ICC) since it issued the warrant about 18 months ago. Ahead of his visit, Ukraine called on Mongolia to hand Putin over to the court in The Hague, and the EU expressed concern that Mongolia might not execute the warrant. A spokesperson for Putin last week said that the Kremlin
RSS