Cairo over the weekend hosted the first tripartite regular meeting of the foreign ministers of Eritrea, Egypt and Somalia during which issues of common concern were on the agenda.
At Saturday’s meeting Mr. Osman Saleh, the Eritrean foreign affairs minister Foreign and his Egyptian and Somali counterparts, Dr. Badir Abdelatty, and Mr. Ahmed Moalim Fiqi, respectively discussed strengthening regional cooperation as well as promote peace and security in the Horn of Africa.
The meeting was conducted in accordance with the provisions of the tripartite summit held on 10 October 2024 between the three countries’ leaders.
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki and his counterpart Abdel Fattah El-Sisi of Egypt and Somalia’s Hassan Sheikh Mahmoud met in Asmara to forge a new security alliance.
The meeting was held against the backdrop of tensions in the region over a controversial deal between landlocked Ethiopia and Somaliland for the former’s access to a Red Sea port in exchange for recognition of the enclave as a sovereign country.
The authorities in Mogadishu who still consider Somaliland as part of Somalia condemned the deal as an affront on their country’s territorial integrity and sought new alliance with Egypt while excluding Ethiopia from troop contributors to African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM).
Toward the end of last year, Egypt according to the terms of a new security pact with Somalia sent troops and military hardware to the country, a move which alarmed Addis Ababa whose relations with Cairo have remained strained over the building of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) over the Nile.
Cairo claimed the dam would compromise its share of water from the world’s longest river, a claim Ethiopia repeatedly dismissed as alarmist and untrue.
Meanwhile the Eritrean foreign affairs minister Osman Saleh on Saturday further held a meeting with his Egyptian counterpart, Dr. Badr Abdelatty, on bolstering economic cooperation between the two countries.
WN/as/APA