Date: Wednesday, 10 October 2018
Rome, 9 October (askanews) - Italy has decided to bet on the peace agreement signed by Ethiopia and Eritrea on 16 September in Jedda, acting as leader in the process of stabilization and economic development just started in the region: the Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte , will in fact be the first head of Western State to go, on 11 and 12 October, to Addis Ababa and Asmara, after former Foreign Minister Enzo Moavero Milanesi, was the prime minister of a Western country to have a three-way meeting with his counterparts from the two countries of the Horn of Africa, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly. The main objective of the Conte mission, said qualified sources to askanews, is "to encourage the peace process and to confirm Italy's commitment to the Horn of Africa,
Conte will meet the Ethiopian and Eritrean leaders, Abyi Ahmed and Isaias Afewerki, already protagonists last July in Asmara of a historic "fraternal embrace" that put an end to 20 years of hostility between the two countries, which have since restarted diplomatic relations , restored the telephone and air links and reopened the land borders, relaunching the trade along one of the borders that only a few months ago was one of the most militarized in the world and allowing Ethiopia, a landlocked country, to return to bring Eritreans. The peace between those who only a few months ago were the two archenemies of the region was also the driving force behind Eritrea's distension with neighboring Somalia and Djibouti, with repercussions also in neighboring South Sudan.
Conte will then arrive in the Horn of Africa at a time when the region is blowing "a wind of hope", as the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, told Jeddah, and where today it is a priority to define the dividends of peace. This issue was already dealt with in the working lunch in New York by Minister Moavero Milanesi with his counterparts in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Workneh Gebeyehu and Osman Saleh, during which he assured to his interlocutors the "convinced and effective support of Italy to the full implementation peace agreement, both bilaterally and in various international and multilateral fora ".
