Ethiopia pursues military ties with Turkey
ADDIS ABABA, March 2 (AFP) — Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday sought to strengthen military ties with Turkey after agreeing on a raft of cooperation deals with his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Aware of the implications of this military move, Meles, whose nation is locked in a strained peace process with Eritrea after their 1998-2000 border war, said Addis Ababa would not resort to an arms-buying spree.
“We have defence industries here in Ethiopia … the cooperation in this area is something that we are looking into,” Meles told a press conference, flanked by Erdogan.
“But I want to stress, considering of the implications of this question, that we are not on a buying spree for arms to destabilize our neighbours,” Meles said.
In the past Ethiopia has been accused of supplying arms to factions in Somalia, thus fomenting instability in a country whose government collapsed in 1991 with the ouster of of strongman Mohammed Siad Barre.
Erdogan wrapped up his two-day visit in this poverty-stricken country by expressing desire to promote development and trade in Ethiopia, a nation of about 70 million people.
“We would like to contribute to the economic development of Ethiopia with the desire to share our expertise in the textile, leather and defence industries and energy fields,” Erdogan said before leaving for South Africa, his main trading partner in Africa.
Erdogan pledged to boost trade between the two nations from the current 100 million to 500 million dollars a year.
Meles reitarated his commitment to resolve the standing border row with Eritrea.
“We are committed to resolve these problems by peaceful means. (But) our talks today had nothing to with it,” Meles said.
Since the Ethiopia-Eritrea border war in 1998-2000, ties between them have remained frosty despite the 2000 a peace accord under which they promised to respect a ruling on the path of the frontier which was decided by an independent Boundary Commission in 2002.
Addis Ababa subsequently rejected the commission’s decision, a position it maintained until November, when it said it had accepted the “principle” of the Boundary Commission’s ruling but wanted “adjustments.”