JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
Tigrayan rebels say their negotiators have arrived in South Africa for African Union-led peace talks with Ethiopia's government. The discussions are aimed at finding a peaceful solution to the country's two-year war.
The negotiations are
scheduled to start on Monday.
Kindeya Gebrehiwot, a
spokesman for the rebel authorities in Tigray, announced the delegation's
arrival in South Africa in a statement on Twitter late Sunday.
"Pressing: immediate
cessation of hostilities, unfettered humanitarian access & withdrawal of
Eritrean forces. There can't be a military solution!" he added.
Ethiopia's government has said
it will participate in the negotiations as diplomatic pressure mounts for an
end to the war in Africa's second most populous country. The
conflict has killed an unknown number of people and left millions in
need of humanitarian aid.
It was not immediately known
if the Ethiopian delegation had arrived.
Fighting resumed in August,
ending a five-month truce, and has seen the return of the Eritrean army to the
battlefield in support of Ethiopian forces and their regional allies.
Last week, the government in
Addis Abeba vowed to re-take control of airports and other federal sites in
Tigray as Ethiopian and Eritrean troops seized towns in the region, sending
civilians fleeing.
Ethiopian prime minister Abiy
Ahmed, who sent troops into Tigray in November 2020 promising a quick victory
over the northern region's dissident leaders, said last week the war
"would end and peace will prevail.
"Ethiopia will be
peaceful, we will not continue fighting indefinitely," the Nobel Peace
Prize winner said Thursday.
"I hope the day when we
will stand with our Tigrayan brothers to work together for development is near."
International calls for a
ceasefire have grown since the AU failed earlier this month to bring the
warring sides to the negotiating table.
The return to the battlefield
in August halted desperately-needed aid into Tigray, a region of six million
that lacks food, medicine and other life-saving essentials as well as basic
services.
Tigray has been under a
communications blackout for over a year, and independent reporting from the
region has been heavily curtailed.
The UN Security Council held a
closed-door meeting on Friday to discuss the spiralling conflict and growing
fears for civilians caught in the crossfire.
The US envoy to the United
Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said after the talks that thousands of
Ethiopian, Eritrean and Tigrayan forces were engaged in active combat.
"The scale of the
fighting and deaths rival what we're seeing in Ukraine, and innocent civilians
are being caught in the crossfire," she said.
"Over two years of
conflict, as many as half a million -- half a million -- people have died, and
the United States is deeply concerned about the potential for further mass
atrocities."
The AU's Peace and Security
Council, its foremost conflict resolution body, also met for the first time
Friday since the fighting resumed in August.
In a statement, the 15-member
council welcomed "the mutual commitments to genuinely participate in the
peace process" and hoped for a "fruitful outcome".
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