Tuesday June 26, 2018
A high-level delegation from Eritrea is heading to neighboring Ethiopia Tuesday for historic talks that could bring an end to one of Africa's longest-running conflicts.
The Foreign Affairs ministry announced Monday that the Eritrean delegation would travel to Addis Ababa sometime this week.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki pledged to send the delegation last week during his country's Martyrs Day observance in the capital, Asmara. President Afwerki's pledge was in response to one made earlier this month by Ethiopia's new reformist Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed that he will honor a deal signed in 2000 to end a two-year border war.Ethiopia had long refused to accept the terms of the deal, which included withdrawing from the border town of Badme.
Eritrea, a former province of Ethiopia, broke away in 1993.