Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Tuesday said he had a meeting with Sudan’s coup leader Abdel Fattah al-Burhan in Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, on Tuesday and that both committed to dialogue to resolve any differences, reported Africa News.
The meeting between the two leaders follow a clash in a disturbed border region last month in which Khartoum said that Ethiopian forces had captured and killed Sudanese troops. The Ethiopian government denied the allegations and blamed the killings on a local militia group.
“We have both agreed that our two countries have plenty of collaborative elements to work on peacefully,” Abiy said in a Twitter post, accompanied by a picture of the two leaders.
“Our common bonds surpass any divisions. We both made a commitment for dialogue & peaceful resolution to outstanding issues,” the Ethiopian prime minister wrote in the post.
The meeting between Abiy and Al-Burhan took place on the sidelines of a meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a seven-country regional body.
“We are happy to convene in a very short time to discuss matters of great importance,” the Sudanese military leader said.
Sudan’s ruling military council also confirmed the meeting, saying that there was a closed-door meeting between al-Burhan and Abiy.
Sudan and Ethiopia have been engulfed in a dispute over a contested fertile border region, al-Fashaqa that has fuelled a surge in tensions between the two countries in recent years.
Al-Fashaqa lies within Sudan’s international boundaries but Ethiopian farmers have been settled in the area for decades. The dispute has resulted in sporadic clashes between the two factions.
The dispute also feeds into wider tensions over land and water between the neighbouring countries, particularly stoked by Ethiopia’s Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the Blue Nile. Ethiopia is scheduled to begin the third filling of the dam in August, a move that is feared to spark new tensions with Egypt and Sudan.
