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Ethiopia PM vows 'peace will prevail' as Tigray rebels agree to talks

Peace talks between Ethiopia’s government and the Tigray rebels being organised by the African Union will commence in South Africa on October 24.

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International pressure for a ceasefire has grown since the African Union failed earlier this month to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table.

Tigray's rebel authorities have said they would attend talks next week aimed at ending war in Ethiopia, as Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed vowed fighting "will end and peace will prevail".

The government also said on Friday that it would participate in negotiations in South Africa being organised by the African Union on Monday, as diplomatic pressure mounts for a settlement to nearly two years of bloodshed.

"Our delegation will attend," Kindeya Gebrehiwot, a spokesperson for the rebel authorities in Tigray, said when asked if they would join the table on October 24.

It comes ahead of a closed-door meeting of the United Nations Security Council on Friday to discuss the spiralling crisis in Africa's second-most populous country.

The AU's Peace and Security Council also convened on Friday and was briefed by its Horn of Africa envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, who is expected to mediate the talks.

The government this week vowed to seize airports and other federal sites from rebel control as Ethiopian forces and their Eritrean allies seized a string of towns in Tigray, sending civilians fleeing.

Abiy, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who sent the army into Tigray in November 2020 to oust the region's dissident authorities, said the war "would end and peace will prevail."

"Ethiopia will be peaceful, we will not continue fighting indefinitely," he told an audience on Thursday at the opening of a civil project outside Addis Ababa.

Great concern

International pressure for a ceasefire has grown since the AU failed earlier this month to bring the warring sides to the negotiating table, and fighting has intensified in embattled Tigray.

Fighting resumed in August, shattering a truce and halting aid into Tigray, a region of six million that lacks food, medicine and other life-saving essentials.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said the UNSC and AU meetings "demonstrate the international community's great concern about the situation" and the need for violence to stop.

The closed-door meeting of the AU's 15-member Peace and Security Council was the first since violence exploded again in August.

The conflict began nearly two years ago when Abiy accused the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), the region's ruling party which resisted central authority, of attacking army camps.

SOURCE: TRTWorld and agencies