Ethiopia and Somalia held talks on Tuesday and tried to move past a deadly border region clash the day before and keep a fragile detente on track.
Somalia’s state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Mohamed Omar, met his Ethiopian counterpart, Mesganu Arega, after their forces clashed in the Somali border state of Jubaland on Monday.
Sources in Jubaland, a semi-autonomous state that has clashed violently with the Somali federal government in recent weeks, says the Ethiopian troops were protecting a group of its local politicians from an attack by Somali forces in the town of Doolow.
The Somali minister expressed the government’s “protest and condemnation of the conduct of Ethiopian forces in Doolow,” according to a statement.
Ethiopia’s foreign ministry put out its own statement denying that it had done anything wrong, instead blaming “third parties… intent on destabilising the Horn of Africa”, without offering any detail.
The Jubaland state government says Somali federal troops in Doolow tried to shoot down a plane containing its politicians and that Ethiopian forces, stationed at the airstrip as part of its counter-insurgency mission, had intervened to stop them.
But both Ethiopia and Somalia appeared keen on Tuesday to keep a recent rapprochement brokered by Turkey on track.
The two countries have been at odds since January when Ethiopia signed an agreement with another breakaway region of Somalia — Somaliland — to lease a stretch of coastline for a port and military base in exchange for recognising its independence, although this was never confirmed by Addis Ababa.
Somalia viewed this as a breach of its sovereignty, sparking a fierce diplomatic and military row.
That appeared to be resolved when Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Somali President Hassan Sheikh Mohamud met in Ankara on December 12 and signed a declaration that is expected to lead to land-locked Ethiopia receiving an alternative sea access in Somalia.
In its statement on Tuesday, Ethiopia said it “values and upholds its commitment to revitalise and deepen the fraternal relations between the two countries in the spirit of the Ankara Declaration.”
Somalia’s foreign ministry also said they spoke of the desire to “harmonise efforts for the full implementation of the Ankara Declaration”.