By Vincent Owino, NAIROBI
Kenya
Sudan’s junta leader Lt-Gen
Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Dr Abiy Ahmed reached
consensus on Tuesday for peaceful resolution to disagreements.Leaders and representatives of Igad member states arrive for the 39th Heads of State Summit in Nairobi on July 6, 2022.
This came as the leaders met
for the first time since the two countries’ tiff over outstanding issues began
a few weeks ago.
The two leaders met in Nairobi
during the 39th Heads of State Summit for Igad members in which only four
heads of state out of the eight member states were represented in person. Other
leaders in attendance were Kenya’s President Uhuru Kenyatta and Djibouti’s
Ismail Omar Guelleh.
South Sudan President Salva
Kiir was represented by Vice President James Wanni, Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni
was represented by Defence Minister Vincent Ssempijja, while Somalia’s Hassan
Mohamud was represented by Deputy Prime Minister Mahdi Mohammed.
At the end of the summit and
after a separate meeting with Gen al-Burhan on the sidelines of the Summit, PM
Abiy tweeted that they had both reached a consensus that their “countries have
plenty of collaborative elements to work on peacefully.”
“We both made a commitment for
dialogue and peaceful resolution to [our] outstanding issues,” he wrote.
Over the last few weeks, the
two countries have been hurling threats at each other.
The conflict started last month
when Sudan accused the Ethiopian military of capturing and killing its troops,
a claim Addis has since denied, saying the slain soldiers were killed by a
“local militia” and not Ethiopian forces.
The Intergovernmental
Authority on Development (Igad) heads of state and government summit had “peace
and security situation in the region” top of its agenda in the closed-door
meeting.
Gen al-Burhan, who chaired the
meeting, said it “comes at a crucial time when our home is besieged by a wide
spectrum of challenges and threats both internally and externally.”
“Peace and security are the
bedrock of prosperity, development and regional integration. Therefore,
conflicts are the single biggest threat to our success as states and
societies,” he added.
President Kenyatta said that
despite the conflicts that have rocked the region, “we see a commitment to a
peaceful resolution,” and called on the leaders to work together “to navigate
the multiple crises that we face.”
With the leader of, the Igad
states deliberated and resolved on issues pertinent to maintenance of peace and
security in the region.
But even as the summit played
a role in brokering peace and dialogue between Khartoum and Addis Ababa, a
series of conflicts remain unresolved in the region, and the leaders
underscored “the need to collaboratively address and diplomatically tackle
national, political and security related issues that bear greater ramifications
on the Igad region.”
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