Ethiopia has struck a “historic” agreement to use the main port in Somalia’s breakaway region of Somaliland, as the landlocked nation seeks more access to sea channels for shipping, officials said on Monday.
The deal on Somaliland’s Berbera port comes months after Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed said his nation, Africa’s second-most populous, would assert its right to access the Red Sea, sparking concerns among its neighbors.
On the southern coast of the Gulf of Aden, Berbera offers an African base at the gateway to the Red Sea and further north to the Suez canal. The memorandum of understanding between Ethiopia and Somaliland was signed by Abiy and Somaliland President Muse Bihi Abdi in Addis Ababa, Abiy’s office said.
Photo: Reuters
The agreement “shall pave the way to realize the aspiration of Ethiopia to secure access to the sea and diversify its access to seaport,” the office wrote on social media. “It also strengthens their security, economic and political partnership.”
Ethiopian National Security Adviser Redwan Hussein said the nation would have access to a leased military base on the Red Sea as part of the agreement.
“A step ahead in the right direction for the this and generations to come,” Redwan wrote on social media.
It was not clear when the pact would take effect.
Ethiopia was cut off from the coast after Eritrea seceded from the nation and declared independence in 1993 following a three-decade war.
Addis Ababa had maintained access to a port in Eritrea until the two nations went to war between 1998 and 2000, and since then Ethiopia funnels most of its trade through Djibouti.
Abiy in a televised speech in October last year had said that Ethiopia “is a nation whose existence was tied to the Red Sea” and that it needed access to a port.
The remarks sparked concerns among regional observers, particularly against a backdrop of apparent tensions with Eritrea, but Abiy sought to alleviate the fears and vowed in November not to invade any neighboring nation, while insisting that his government would not abandon its demand for port access.
Ethiopia’s economy has been constrained by its lack of access to the Red Sea.
Ethiopia in 2018 acquired a 19 percent stake in Berbera port, according to DP World, which manages the port’s operations.
The company itself holds a 51 percent stake, while Somaliland has the remaining 30 percent.
Somaliland has a long coastline on the Gulf of Aden. It prints its own currency, issues its own passports and elects its own government, but its quest for statehood has mostly gone unrecognized internationally. It established diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 2020.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) launched a week-long diplomatic blitz of South America on Thursday by inaugurating a massive deep-water port in Peru, a US$1.3 billion investment by Beijing as it seeks to expand trade and influence on the continent. With China’s demand for agricultural goods and metals from Latin America growing, Xi will participate in the APEC summit in Lima then head to the Group of 20 summit in Rio de Janeiro next week, where he will also make a state visit to Brazil. Xi and Peruvian President Dina Boluarte participated on Thursday by video link in the opening
‘HARD-HEADED’: Some people did not evacuate to protect their property or because they were skeptical of the warnings, a disaster agency official said Typhoon Man-yi yesterday slammed into the Philippines’ most populous island, with the national weather service warning of flooding, landslides and huge waves as the storm sweeps across the archipelago nation. Man-yi was still packing maximum sustained winds of 185kph after making its first landfall late on Saturday on lightly populated Catanduanes island. More than 1.2 million people fled their homes ahead of Man-yi as the weather forecaster warned of a “life-threatening” effect from the powerful storm, which follows an unusual streak of violent weather. Man-yi uprooted trees, brought down power lines and smashed flimsy houses to pieces after hitting Catanduanes in the typhoon-prone
HOPEFUL FOR PEACE: Zelenskiy said that the war would ‘end sooner’ with Trump and that Ukraine must do all it can to ensure the fighting ends next year Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom early yesterday suspended gas deliveries via Ukraine, Vienna-based utility OMV said, in a development that signals a fast-approaching end of Moscow’s last gas flows to Europe. Russia’s oldest gas-export route to Europe, a pipeline dating back to Soviet days via Ukraine, is set to shut at the end of this year. Ukraine has said it would not extend the transit agreement with Russian state-owned Gazprom to deprive Russia of profits that Kyiv says help to finance the war against it. Moscow’s suspension of gas for Austria, the main receiver of gas via Ukraine, means Russia now only
‘HUGS NOT WORKING’: Ken Salazar said that the bodies of people killed by violence ‘can be seen everywhere’ and that the nation’s leaders were downplaying the issue Mexico failed to accept aid in its fight against drug cartels and “closed the doors” on security cooperation with Washington, US Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar told a news conference in Mexico City on Wednesday. Salazar said there was rampant violence, police corruption and that the Mexican government had the mistaken attitude that “there is no problem.” “When they just say: ‘There is no problem, we have these statistics to show people there is no problem,’ that is not based on reality,” Salazar said. “There is a very big problem.” Mexico sent a diplomatic note to the US embassy “expressing its surprise” at
RSS