The Eritrean president’s visit to Khartoum comes amid tense relations between the Ethiopian government, a close ally, and Sudan.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is in Khartoum for talks with Sudanese officials, on a two-day visit amid tensions between the governments of Ethiopia, a close ally of the Eritrean leader, and Sudan.
Accompanied by Foreign Minister Osman Saleh and Presidential Advisor Yemane Ghebreab, Isaias was received Tuesday at the international airport in the Sudanese capital by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, head of the sovereign council in power in Sudan.
The two leaders then began closed talks on cooperation and ways to strengthen ties between their countries, according to a statement from the council.
The Eritrean Information Ministry said in a separate statement that Isaias and al-Burhan had “agreed to strengthen their efforts in the implementation of the Cooperation Agreement concluded between the two countries in the political sectors. , economic, social, security and military ”.
President Isaias Afwerki and his delegation were warmly greeted upon arrival at Khartoum International Airport by the Chairman of the Sovereign Council of Sudan, General Abdel Fatah al Burhan, Foreign Minister al-Sadiq al-Mahdi and ” other senior Sudanese officials and dignitaries pic.twitter.com/fY8osvvYrO
– Yemane G. Meskel (@hawelti) May 4, 2021
Isaias also had talks with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdallah Hamdok in which they stressed the importance of regional integration in the Horn of Africa and “agreed to focus on some concrete projects to consolidate bilateral relations between Eritrea and Sudan in the regional framework ”.
Visit comes after Sudan accused “a third” in February of siding with Ethiopia decades-old border dispute with Sudan on disputed agricultural land in the fertile region of al-Fashaga. He was probably referring to Eritrea, which has deployed troops to Ethiopia’s Tigray region to fight alongside the Ethiopian federal forces in the conflict.
Following Sudan’s accusation, Eritrea dispatched its foreign minister to Sudan to assure Khartoum that Eritrea was not part of the dispute between Sudan and Ethiopia. At the end of March, the United Nations reported that Eritrean forces were operating in the so-called al-Fashaga triangle.
The decades-long disagreement over al-Fashaga escalated in November after Sudan deployed troops to territories it says are occupied by Ethiopian farmers and militias.
Sudan and Ethiopia have since held rounds of talks to try to settle the dispute, most recently in Khartoum in December, but have not made any progress.
Sudan said its forces had recaptured most of its territory. But he called on Ethiopia to withdraw troops from at least two points that he said lie inside Sudan under an agreement that demarcated the borders between the two nations in the early 1900s. .
Ethiopia, however, accused Sudan of taking advantage of the conflict in Tigray to enter Ethiopian territory and loot property, kill civilians and displace thousands. The fighting in Tigray has sent more than 70,000 Ethiopian refugees to Sudan.
Isaia’s visit also comes as he faces increasing pressure from the international community to withdraw Eritrean troops from Tigray.
Eritrean soldiers, long enemies of the now fugitive leaders of Tigray, have also been accused of some of the worst human rights violations in the Tigray conflict, including massacres of civilians and systematic rapes.
