Ethiopia Federal government State Ministers for Foreign Affairs and Agriculture and Animal Husbandry are in Hargeisa, today, to iron our final details of the multi-dimensional Cooperation Pact between the two governments with counterparts in the Republic of Somaliland.
The delegation led by Ambassador Taye Atsk-Selassie, the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, includes, besides the State Minister for Agriculture, the Director of the Ethiopian Trade and Economy Bureau in IGAD, Ambassador Selman, and a number of high officers from Shipping, Customs, and Trade.
While in Somaliland, they will hold intensive meetings with Somaliland officials in order to conclude a cooperation portfolio that had been developed between the two countries – but not yet conclusively signed.
The arrival of this high-level delegation will not only further cement economic and political relations between the neighbors but the delegation would, certainly, look into recurrences of armed clashes targeting civilians that happen n the neighboring Somali region. The last of these claimed over 40 lives only a few days earlier in the Gaashaamo region.
As security is an integral pillar in the Pact, it is crucial that the Federal government robustly intervene to protect inhabitants that appear to be victims of a revengeful spree in the hands of the Somali region’s Liyuu Police units.
In the wake of the historical agreement on the development of Berbera seaport and the completion of the Berbera Corridor road between the Republic of Somaliland and the UAE, as represented by DP World, the Ethiopian delegation is seen as a positive rubber-stamp for a deal that would enormously benefit land-locked Ethiopia on a number of levels and sectors as it would the Republic of Somaliland and the UAE.
