Tigray Forces In Ethiopia Support ‘Negotiated End’ To War

NAIROBI, Kenya: The leader of Tigray forces in Ethiopia has expressed the commitment to a negotiated end to the nine-month war that has killed thousands and left nearly half a million people facing famine, while the United Nations secretary-general on Thursday warned there is no military solution.

In a letter to U.N. chief Antonio Guterres, seen by The Associated Press ahead of Thursdays U.N. Security Council meeting on the crisis, Debretsion Gebremichael said the Tigray side requires an impartial mediator, among other conditions.

But he warned that the African Union, whose headquarters are in Ethiopia, cannot provide any solution to the war that the continental body endorsed early in the fighting. That complicates the AU initiative announced Thursday to appoint former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo as its special representative to the Horn of Africa.

The prospect for talks between Ethiopias government and the Tigray leadership, who dominated the national government for 27 years before Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office, remains deeply challenging. Ethiopias government earlier this year declared the Tigray Peoples Liberation Front a terrorist group, and the United States told Thursday’s meeting that the government has not responded positively to calls for talks.

Meanwhile, the conflict has spread in recent weeks into Ethiopias Amhara and Afar regions, displacing hundreds of thousands of people, while Abiys government has called all able citizens to war, urging them to stop the Tigray forces once and for all. The heated rhetoric on both sides has led to growing international calls for an immediate cease-fire.

The further the resurgent Tigray forces advance outside the Tigray region, the greater the harm to the ethnic Tigrayans for whom they act, Kenyan Ambassador Martin Kimani told the Security Council meeting, while urging Ethiopia to be prepared to lift the terror designation. He also encouraged the African Union to step up.

What began as a political falling-out now threatens to destabilize Africas second most populous country, while abuses have been committed by all sides in the mix of armed groups that include those from neighboring Eritrea.

The world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade continues to worsen.

Guterres at Thursday’s meeting criticized the de facto humanitarian blockade of the Tigray region of 6 million people, with food warehouses there now empty, and the United States warned that if these impediments continue, large numbers of people will starve to death.

With sadness and disbelief, we are once again discussing the possibility of a manmade famine in Tigray,” Norway’s Deputy Ambassador Trine Heimerback said, referring to Ethiopia’s catastrophic starvation crisis in the 1980s.

The aim is to exterminate Tigrayans by starving them to death, Debretsion’s letter asserted.

Ethiopian Ambassador Taye Atske Selassie told the meeting that his country is improving the process for the delivery of aid. Ethiopia’s government has accused Tigray forces of looting and impeding the delivery of aid.

The TPLF is standing between Ethiopia and peace, he said, accusing it of being bent on destabilizing the country of 110 million people. We are open to working with all well-intentioned partners, he added.

The war that began in November has affected all Ethiopians and has already drained over a billion dollars from the countrys coffers, Guterres said.

But the Security Council appears largely powerless to take significant action on the crisis, as permanent member China expressed its opposition to external interference in Ethiopia’s affairs. Both China and Russia warned that sanctions by individual countries, as the U.S. imposed this week against the chief of staff of Eritrea’s defense forces, would only worsen the conflict.

Disclaimer: This post has been auto-published from an agency feed without any modifications to the text and has not been reviewed by an editor

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here

For all the latest world News Click Here 

Read original article here

Denial of responsibility! TechAI is an automatic aggregator around the global media. All the content are available free on Internet. We have just arranged it in one platform for educational purpose only. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, all materials to their authors. If you are the owner of the content and do not want us to publish your materials on our website, please contact us by email – [email protected]. The content will be deleted within 24 hours.