Contributed by Ray White
Special Envoy Jeffrey Feltman says Ethiopia is headed down a dangerous path, but it is still not too late to reverse course.
The United States’ top priority is the “unity and integrity of the Ethiopian state” and its “commitment to the Ethiopian people,” U.S. Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa Jeffrey Feltman said at the U.S. Institute of Peace in Washington on November 2. Noting that the average civil war lasts 20 years, Feltman said a war that long would be disastrous for Ethiopia and urged all parties to the conflict to “give peace a chance.”
Feltman said the Ethiopian government and the TPLF should immediately commence negotiating and implement “a series of parallel steps that will stop the violence, allow life-saving access to Tigray, lead to TPLF withdrawal from Afar and Amhara and Eritrean forces from Ethiopian territory, result in a durable cease-fire (with rules understood and perhaps with third-party monitors), and initiate accountability for human rights abuses and any war crimes.”
The special envoy said the United States wants to revitalize its relationship with Ethiopia, but that “Ethiopia, not the United States, is in the driver’s seat.”
