Nov. 2 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The mediator of the African Union, Olusegun Obasanjo, announced this Wednesday that the Government of Ethiopia and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Tigray (TPLF) have signed an agreement for the cessation of hostilities in the framework of the conflict that is devastating the region of Tigray (north) since November 2020.
Representatives of the Ethiopian Government and the TPLF have held a “high-level” meeting, under the auspices of the African Union, and have signed the ceasefire agreement, although more details of the official document are unknown at the moment, according to collected the newspaper ‘Addis Standard’.
The talks were attended by former Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and former South African Vice President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, as well as representatives of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the United Nations and the United States.
The TPLF agreed to sit down for a dialogue with the Ethiopian government at the beginning of October, an initiative proposed by the AU to reach a “peaceful resolution of the current conflict”. One of the conditions of the TPLF was that during the negotiations there be “additional actors” as observers or guarantors.
The war has worsened in recent weeks after the outbreak of new fighting in August after five months of humanitarian truce agreed between the parties. The TPLF previously denounced a large-scale offensive by the Eritrean Army in support of Ethiopian forces.
The conflict in Tigray broke out in November 2020 after an attack by the TPLF against the main Army base, located in Mekelle, after which the Abiy Ahmed government ordered an offensive against the group after months of political and administrative tensions. A “humanitarian truce” is currently in force, although both sides have accused each other of preventing the delivery of aid.
The TPLF has accused Abiy of stirring up tensions since he came to power in April 2018, when he became the first Oromo to take office. Until then, the TPLF had been the dominant force within the ethnically based coalition that had governed Ethiopia since 1991, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). The group opposed Abiy’s reforms, seeing them as an attempt to undermine his influence.
