MOGADISHU (Somaliguardian) – Somalia’s President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud on Sunday concluded a one-day visit to neighboring Ethiopia, where he and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed reached a pivotal agreement to fully restore diplomatic relations, thus ending a year-long period of strained tensions.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took to social media to share images marking his farewell to President Mohamud at Addis Ababa’s airport, one of which depicted the two leaders holding hands and smiling—a powerful visual representation of the thaw in diplomatic relations between the two neighboring nations.
“This afternoon, I bid farewell to President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud following productive discussions on deepening cooperation and strengthening bilateral ties during his working visit to Ethiopia,” Ethiopian Premier Abiy Ahmed said on X, formerly Twitter.
On Saturday, the two leaders jointly declared their commitment to fully restore diplomatic representation in their respective capitals and to fortify cooperation across critical sectors, including security, trade, and diplomacy, with the goal of advancing their bilateral relations.
This agreement, which builds upon an initial accord between the two nations in Ankara in December last year, comes nearly a year after Ethiopia’s controversial deal with Somalia’s breakaway northern break-away region of Somaliland, which granted Ethiopia access to a stretch of land along the Red Sea for the construction of a naval base. This arrangement had ignited a diplomatic rift between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa.
Among the key points discussed by Mohamud and Abiy were Ethiopia’s potential access to Somalia’s maritime resources through commercial channels and the inclusion of Ethiopian troops in the African Union Support and Stabilization Mission in Somalia (AUSSOM), although the precise details of their official agreement remain undisclosed.
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