Abiy meets AU envoys for talks on conflict

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed yesterday met with African Union envoys to discuss the conflict in Tigray, where the army is poised for what he has called the final offensive against regional forces. Abiy, the winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, on Thursday announced a “third and final phase” in his campaign against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), whose forces have been battling federal troops in the defiant northern region for three weeks.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed yesterday met with African Union (AU) envoys to discuss the conflict in Tigray, where the army is poised for what he has called the final offensive against regional forces.

Abiy, the winner of last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, on Thursday announced a “third and final phase” in his campaign against the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), whose forces have been battling federal troops in the defiant northern region for three weeks.

The violence has killed many hundreds and displaced tens of thousands more, but there are grave fears for half a million civilians in Mekele, the regional capital, which the army says it has encircled ahead of a threatened attack.

The international community has warned such a strike could violate rules of war and has called for urgent mediation. Addis Ababa has refused to negotiate with the TPLF and Abiy has rebuffed calls for dialogue as “interference” in Ethiopia’s internal affairs. But the prime minister received at his office in Addis Ababa yesterday three African ex-leaders — Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf of Liberia and Kgalema Motlanthe of South Africa — dispatched this week by the AU as mediators.

In a statement issued after their meeting, Abiy said he appreciated “this gesture and... the steadfast commitment this demonstrates to the principle of African solutions to African problems.”

Even so, the government has a “constitutionally mandated responsibility to enforce rule of law in the region and across the country,” he said. Many attempts, he added, had been made to negotiate with the TPLF before military action was ordered on November 4.

The Tigrayan government, meanwhile, said the federal army was bombarding towns and villages and inflicting heavy damage, although it did not specifically mention Mekele.

“Our struggle will continue from every direction until the self-determination of the People of Tigray is guaranteed and the invading force is driven out,” the authorities said in a statement read on local television, Tigray TV. It called upon “the Tigray people as usual to struggle and defend” themselves.

The conflict has erupted in a year when the 55-member AU — which is headquartered in Addis Ababa — resolved to play a more prominent role in resolving conflicts across the continent under the slogan “Silencing the Guns”.