To defuse tensions ahead of a fresh round of negotiations sponsored by Ankara, Turkiye will undertake separate discussions with rival Horn of Africa countries, Somalia and Ethiopia, the foreign minister announced on Thursday.
After Ethiopia and the breakaway Somali Republic of Somaliland reached a contentious maritime agreement in January, relations between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa have drastically deteriorated.
The memorandum of understanding gives Ethiopia — one of the world’s biggest landlocked countries — access to the sea, but Somalia has condemned it as an assault on its sovereignty.
Turkiye, which has been conducting shuttle diplomacy between Ethiopian and Somalian foreign ministers since the summer, mediated two rounds of talks in July and August.
The third round, which was supposed to take place on Tuesday, was canceled as Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara would rather meet them separately before another round of talks.
“Because there are some lessons we learned from the previous two rounds of talks,” Fidan told the Anadolu news agency.
Fidan said he would directly talk to the two parties to “bring their positions closer” and help them reach a deal.
Under the Jan. 1 deal with Addis Ababa, Somaliland agreed to lease 20 km of its coast for 50 years to Ethiopia, which wants to set up a naval base and a commercial port.
Somaliland has said Ethiopia would give it formal recognition in return, although Addis Ababa has never confirmed this.
Somaliland, a former British protectorate of 4.5 million people, unilaterally declared independence in 1991, but the international community has never recognized the move. Addis Ababa had access to a port in Eritrea until the two countries went to war between 1998 and 2000. Since then, Ethiopia has sent most of its sea trade through Djibouti.
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