In what seemed a deliberate move, Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed left for neighboring Eritrea and then for Turkey to shun meeting the visiting U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman in Addis Ababa.
The government and majority of Ethiopians alike tend to believe that the United States is working to restore terrorist TPLF to power, not to resolve the conflict in the country’s Tigray and neighboring regions.
In a social media campaign, Ethiopians across the world campaigned against Feltman’s visit to Ethiopia with the hashtag #FeltmanGoBackToKabul.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Wednesday morning received a ceremonial welcome from Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan who reportedly vowed to extend all military support to Ethiopia.
Feltman will also travel to Djibouti and the United Arab Emirates and was scheduled to meet senior officials in the three countries and discuss opportunities for the United States to promote peace and support the stability and prosperity of the Horn of Africa.
Mr. Jeffery Feltman is back to Ethiopia for a visit for a second time in about three months. When he visited first in May of this year, the United States’ stated objective was a” sustained diplomatic effort to address the interlinked political, security, and humanitarian crises in the Horn of Africa, and he will coordinate U.S. policy across the region to advance that goal. ”
However, the US has been calling more explicitly for an end to the conflict in, back then, in the Tigray region of Ethiopia. Now the war is no longer in that region as the TPLF took it to Afar and Amhara regions from where over five hundred thousand people were displaced.
MG/abj/APA