Saudi brokers Ethiopia, Eritrea deal to boost regional security

Bloomberg

Saudi Arabia brokered a new peace agreement between Ethiopia and Eritrea aimed at stabilising the Horn of Africa region, Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki signed the so-called Jeddah Peace Accord on Sunday in the presence of King Salman bin Abdulaziz and United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. It’s the second peace deal the two states have made since they ended decades of enmity in July.
The deal is “a historic milestone for the peoples of Ethiopia and Eritrea and will contribute to strengthening security and stability in the region at large,” Al-Jubeir said in a statement on Twitter. The agreement comes after “extensive Saudi back-channel diplomacy” to maintain stability and development in one of the world’s most strategic locations, Saud al-Sarhan, secretary-general of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, said by email from Riyadh.
The accord can also be viewed as Riyadh “moving forward on a key element” of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s so-called Vision 2030, al-Sarhan said. This “can only be realised if the Horn of Africa is at peace,” al-Sarhan said.
“Hosting the signing of peace agreement in Jeddah is an important sign of Saudi Arabia’s commitment to regional peace, security, and the freedom of navigation in the Red Sea.”
Eritrea and Ethiopia declared peace in July and agreed to reestablish economic links after an unprecedented summit between the neighbours’ leaders ended decades of enmity.
The states fought a 1998-2000 border war that claimed as many as 100,000 lives and left thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean families divided.

Rebels to seek self-determination vote
Bloomberg

A rebel group in Ethiopia said it will demand a referendum on self-determination for the country’s troubled, gas-rich Somali region during landmark peace talks with Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government.
The plan by the Ogaden National Liberation Front, which has staged a low-level insurgency in Ethiopia’s east for more than three decades, comes as Abiy invites once-banned opponents to take part in elections. The demands may aggravate a scramble for the region’s energy resources, including natural gas reserves the government estimates will eventually earn it $7 billion a year. “We want to achieve self-determination recognised by international law under the current Ethiopian constitution,” Ahmed Yassin Abdi, the ONLF’s foreign secretary, said by phone from the Kenyan capital, Nairobi.