KENYA: East African leaders hope to solve Ethiopia - Eritrea dispute through negotiations

Record ID: 362868

  • Title: KENYA: East African leaders hope to solve Ethiopia - Eritrea dispute through negotiations
  • Date: 21st March 2006
  • Summary: SUDAN PRESIDENT OMAR AL BASHIR AND DJIBOUTI PRESIDENT ISMAEL OMAR GUELLEH SEATED
  • Embargoed: 5th April 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Kenya
  • Country: Kenya
  • Topics: International Relations
  • Reuters ID: LVA1O5K43ZH05YRIZWLRODKEFGYX
  • Story Text: East Africa must focus on solving the Ethiopia-Eritrea border dispute and also bolster the continent's credibility by shepherding Sudan and Somalia's peace deals, regional leaders said at a summit in Nairobi on Monday (March 20).
    As well as the tenuous aftermath of civil wars in Somalia and Sudan and the potential of renewed conflict on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border, the leaders were also using their Nairobi summit to discuss a devastating drought.
    Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki urged Ethiopia and Eritrea to exercise restraint and negotiate to end a fight over their border, the source of a 1998-2000 war that killed 70,000 people.
    "I wish to call on our brothers in Ethiopia and Eritrea to exercise restraint and engage in dialogue in order to diffuse tension along their common border. We strongly believe that there is a window of opportunity to resolve the simmering tensions amicably," Kibaki told the summit.
    Kibaki on Monday assumed a two-year chairmanship of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a 7-member bloc founded in 1986 to counter drought and desertification.
    Since then, it has metamorphosed to push peace and development in its member states - Kenya, Djibouti, Uganda, Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
    It led talks to end Sudan's two-decade civil war with an historic peace pact in January 2005, and those that created Somalia's transitional federal government in late 2004.
    Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, the outgoing chairman, said there could be no lasting peace in Somalia and Sudan until their national armies were up and running properly.
    Burundi's success in integrating former foes in one army is proof Africans can solve their own conflicts, he said.
    Anarchic Somalia has no national army yet. Sudan, under its peace deal, has integrated some former southern rebels and regular soldiers from the Khartoum government into joint units.
    A request by the regional bloc to give food to Somali militiamen who had stayed out of the city of Baidoa - allowing the country to hold its first parliamentary meeting on home soil in 15 years - was also being discussed at the one-day summit.
    Museveni also spoke about drought in East Africa region.
    "On the negative side, apart from the conflicts or potential conflicts within and between states, there has been added the phenomena of droughts and consequent famines. Since our region is endowed with a lot of natural resources including reasonable supplies of fresh water, and here I use the word reasonable deliberately, some of our people who go to Harvard to study they think that African has a lot of water," he said.
    East African foreign ministers over the weekend proposed creating a regional emergency fund to counter drought and famine, which the leaders were expected to consider.
    The drought has put at least 6.25 million people in need of immediate food aid across the region.
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