Security Council calls for end to Ethiopia conflict

UNITED NATIONS — The U.N. Security Council called for an end to the intensifying conflict in Ethiopia on Friday and for unhindered access for humanitarian aid to tackle the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade in the war-torn Tigray region.

The U.N.’S most powerful body expressed concern about the impact of the conflict on “the stability of the country and the wider region” and called on all parties to refrain “from inflammatory hate speech and incitement to violence and divisiveness.”

The statement was approved by the 15 council members the day after the first anniversary of the war in the northern Tigray region, which has killed thousands of people and displaced millions. It was the council’s second statement on the conflict and the first to address the worsening conflict.

The council called on the parties “to put an end to hostilities and to negotiate a lasting cease-fire, and for the creation of conditions for the start of an inclusive Ethiopian national dialogue to resolve the crisis and create the foundation for peace and stability throughout the country.”

Council members said the language in the statement was watered down after objections from Russia to the original statement, which “called on all parties to immediately end hostilities without preconditions.”

But the statement, read by Mexico’s U.N. Ambassador Juan Ramon De La Fuente Ramirez, the current council president, did call for an end to hostilities — though without the word immediately.

In recent weeks, the conflict has expanded, with Tigray forces seizing cities on a highway leading to Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, and linking with another armed group, the Oromo Liberation Army, with which it struck an alliance in August.