Ethiopian PM bags Nobel prize

FORGIVING: PREMIER SAYS WAR IS ‘EPITOME OF HELL’

Committee head acknowledges that Abiy’s works ‘seems to be at a standstill’.

Oslo

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali collected the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo yesterday, appealing for unity as ethnic violence flares in his country and reconciliation efforts with former foe Eritrea have stalled.

“There is no ‘Us and Them’,” he said in his speech at Oslo’s flower-bedecked City Hall. “There is only ‘Us’, for ‘We’ are all bound by a shared destiny of love, forgiveness and reconciliation.”

The Nobel committee honoured Abiy – Africa’s youngest leader at 43 – for the spectacular progress in the months after he took power in April 2018.

Just months into his premiership he met Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki to formally end a stalemate that had dragged on since a 1998-2000 border conflict.

He has pushed to introduce democratic elections in a country long ruled by authoritarian governments and played a wider role as a mediator in East Africa.

But the winds have since shifted – some of his domestic reforms have fuelled a flare-up of ethnic tension, and outstanding issues with Eritrea have once again come to the fore.

Faced with these challenges, he called for unity as he picked up his award in a formal ceremony attended by the Norwegian royal family and dignitaries.

During his speech, Abiy was quick to praise Afwerki as his “partner and comrade-in-peace” – the only leader Eritrea has known since it gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

“We understood our nations are not enemies. Instead, we were victims of the common enemy called poverty,” he said.

A former soldier, Abiy also spoke of the ravages of war, recalling how his entire unit had been wiped out in an Eritrean artillery attack but he had survived after briefly leaving a foxhole.

“War is the epitome of hell for all involved,” he said.

During the lightning-fast rapprochement that followed the peace deal with Asmara, embassies reopened, flights resumed and meetings were held across the region.

But the “Abiymania” hype has faded and he is now facing major challenges. The land border between the two nations is once again closed and the question of border demarcations is unresolved.

“At present, this work seems to be at a standstill,” said the head of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, Berit Reiss-Andersen. –

Picture: AFP TORCH PARADE. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Abiy Ahmed Ali and his wife Zinash Tayachew wave to the crowd from the balcony of the Grand Hotel in Oslo yesterday.