Ethiopia’s PM, opposition begin talks to end political stalemate
Oct 2, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Ethiopia’s two main opposition parties agreed Sunday to continue talks that led the opposition to call off a three-day general strike protesting against Meles’ government, officials said.
The talks were brokered late Saturday by European Commission delegation head Tim Clarke, U.S. embassy Charge D’Affaires Vicky Huddleston and four other diplomats, who met separately with Meles and leaders of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy and the United Ethiopian Democratic Force to resolve tensions in Ethiopia.
Meles told the diplomats that he would only meet with the opposition if they called off their proposed general strike, a condition agrred to by the opposition.
Opposition leaders will meet again with Meles on Tuesday or Wednesday to hold more detailed talks on reaching an agreement on opposition grievances about the results of troubled May parliamentary elections and arrests of their members.
“We have told the PM our concern on the election issues and other human rights issues as well as the current political stalemate,” Merara Gudina, vice chairman of the United Ethiopian Democratic Force, told The Associated Press.
“Today, we have started the long-awaited peaceful talk. The opposition have expressed their various concerns to the PM. We have agreed to design a specific agenda or modalities and continue the negotiation,” Information Minister Bereket Simon said.
On Saturday, the two opposition groups had urged people to stay home starting Monday to protest the results of disputed May parliamentary elections, the arrests of opposition members and to press for the formation of a national unity government.
Earlier, the two parties had planned to hold a major rally in Addis Ababa on Sunday, but postponed it when the government demanded they unconditionally accept the results of the parliamentary elections that they still contest.
Police killed dozens of people in June during demonstrations in Addis Ababa to protest alleged election fraud.
On Thursday, the two parties said that since Sept. 19 authorities had arrested 859 opposition members across the country and security forces had killed one opposition member in the Amhara region, 400 kilometers (250 miles) south of the capital, Addis Ababa.
Final results released by the National Electoral Board gave Meles’s Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front 327 seats in the 547-seat parliament, enough to form the next government. Opposition parties got 174 seats _ a substantial improvement over the 12 that they won in the previous elections in 2000.
European Union observers and former U.S. President Jimmy Carter have expressed serious concerns about the elections, but also said that, overall, the experience would encourage democracy. It was the first Ethiopian election that foreign experts were allowed to observe.
(AP/ST)