President holds talks with Abiy Ahmed in Addis Ababa on a one day working visit

ADDIS ABABA (SONNA): President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud has held talks with the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed, during a one day working visit to Addis Ababa, in a meeting the two sides said was intended to strengthen relations between the countries and to discuss cooperation in the region.

The President and his delegation arrived at Bole International Airport, where they were received by the Prime Minister in person and accorded a guard of honour by Ethiopian forces. The two then moved to the VIP reception before travelling to the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s office, where the meeting was held with delegations from both countries present.

The talks covered the shared interests of the two countries, the strengthening of security in the Horn of Africa, and cooperation in trade and diplomacy. The President returned to Mogadishu the same day.

The level of protocol is worth recording. A prime minister receiving a visiting head of state personally at the airport, rather than delegating it to a minister or an official, is a deliberate signal, and for a working visit of a single day it is a marked one.

The visit takes place in a week in which the two countries have both been active on the same files. The President addressed the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly last Wednesday, where he said Somalia firmly rejects unilateral actions that undermine its sovereignty, its unity and its internationally recognised borders, and that agreements of that kind between nations should be settled through dialogue and in accordance with international law. He named no country and no agreement.

Security in the Horn was named in the Addis Ababa talks as it was in several of the President’s meetings in New York, where he discussed regional security with the Crown Prince of Kuwait and where the Foreign Minister took up Red Sea and Horn of Africa security with his Egyptian counterpart.

The two countries also share a set of live regional questions. Ethiopia contributes troops to the African Union Support and Stabilisation Mission in Somalia, whose financing remains unresolved and which the President has said requires predictable and sustained support during the Somali security transition. Both are members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, which adopted a High-Level Call to Action on El Niño preparedness in Addis Ababa on 17 September naming southern Ethiopia and central and southern Somalia among the areas most exposed to the coming rains. Somalia chaired the first meeting of Horn of Africa Initiative trade ministers in the Ethiopian capital earlier this month, at which Ethiopia was among the six countries represented.

Neither side published an agreement, a joint statement or a list of outcomes from the meeting, and the Somali account describes the visit as a working one. What it establishes is that the two leaders met in person, at the Ethiopian Prime Minister’s office, with their delegations, and that security in the Horn was on the agenda.