Monday June 13, 2022
PM Abiy (left) and Debretion Gebremichal, TPLF chairman ( right) ( Photo : File)
Weeks after unconfirmed news regarding secret negotiation
between Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government and the Tigray People’s
Liberation Front (TPLF) in Nigeria, a new report indicates that the talk
between the two parties is going to take place in Tanzania.
Le Monde, a French News
source, said, in a report published on Thursday, “behind the scenes”
negotiation is organised between the Federal government and TPLF forces. It is
planned to take place at the end of June in Arusha, Tanzania.
The source cited “several African and western diplomats” to
report that the discussion could start by the end of this month.
The negotiation is said to be behind doors and both parties
will be represented by a team of five negotiators. The negotiation aims, a
negotiated ceasefire.
Humanitarian deliveries and resumption of social services in
the Tigray region, including electricity and banking, among other things,
constitute agenda items for the talk.
According to Le Monde, TPLF is to renounce claim over
Wolkait area of Gondar which is used to call as “Western Tigray.” Le Monde cited unnamed diplomatic sources in
Addis Ababa to report that “the Tigrayan leadership gives the impression
of gradually abandoning its claims to Wolqayt.”
The TPLF, however, says that the report is “mendacious.”
In a message shared on social media, Getachew Reda, TPLF
spokesperson, said :
“An article by a French newspaper #LeMonde apparently
claims, quoting unnamed Addis-based diplomats, that discreet talks will be held
b/n Tigray and Ethiopian authorities and the former has “abandoned their claims
to Western Tigray”. These are mendacious claims,of course. While we will
officially address these claims soon, let me set the record straight on the
question: it is the declared intention& position of the government of
Tigray to reclaim every square-inch of Tigray’s territory by every possible means
available- peaceful or otherwise; and soon!”
Earlier this week, press secretary in the office of the
Prime Minister, Billene Seyoum, described reports of unconfirmed clandestine
talk between Abiy Ahmed’s government and the TPLF as “disinformation by local
media.”
However, former Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo, who is
now serving the African Union as special envoy to the Horn of Africa, said
there have been improvements in the indirect talks between the TPLF and Prime
Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government. Mr. Obasanjo said that the talk is now better
than what it was six months ago.
When Ethiopia’s Minister for Finance, Ahmed Shede, presented
a draft budget for the next fiscal year at the Ethiopian Parliament, he said
that one of the assumptions taken into consideration when preparing the budget
is that there will be no war in northern Ethiopia. The Tigray region itself
will be getting 12 billion Ethiopian
birr from the budget.
Since the TPLF is firmly administering the region, despite
the fact that the Ethiopian parliament designated it as a terrorist
organization, it will be administering the budget to be released from the
Federal government.