Foreign ministers of France and Germany on Thursday hailed the success in implementing a peace agreement signed last year to end two years of war in Ethiopia, on a joint visit to Addis Ababa, reported The Africa News.
France’s Catherine Colonna and Germany’s Annalena Baerbock began their trip to Ethiopia a day after Tigrayan rebels announced they have started handing over their heavy weapons to the Ethiopian military, which was one of the conditions mentioned in the November 2 peace deal signed in the South African capital Pretoria.
Under the deal, the disarmament should take place simultaneously with the withdrawal of foreign forces that are not part of the Ethiopian national army.
During the two-day trip, the two foreign ministers met Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and also visited a World Food Programme distribution center in Adama, just outside Addis Ababa, containing recently shipped grain for the war-torn regions of Ethiopia. The site holds 50,000 tonnes of wheat.
At a joint press briefing, the French foreign minister Colonna welcomed good progress and encouraged the same.
“Hostilities have ceased, aid has been able to reach the regions which had not received it… a return of arms (by rebels) has begun,” she said.
She called for the establishment of a transitional justice mechanism to punish abuses during the conflict.
The war that erupted in November 2020 between the Ethiopian military and the Tigrayan rebel forces displaced more than two million and left millions more in need of humanitarian aid.
Since the signing of the peace deal, there has been a limited resumption of aid deliveries to the war-torn Tigray region.
Basic services such as communications, banking, and electricity are slowly being restored to the stricken region of six million people.
The two foreign ministers are also scheduled to hold talks with other ministers as well as African Union officials and human rights campaigners.
