Addis Ababa, Khartoum and Sanaa deny ganging up against Asmara

SANAA, Nov 2 (AFP) — The foreign ministers of Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen ended a two-day meeting here Sunday denying they were ganging up against neighboring Eritrea, which has stormy relations with all three states.

The “Sanaa grouping” of the three states was set up to “strengthen cooperation and partnership between the countries of the region and is not directed against anyone,” Yemen’s Abu Bakr al-Kurbi told a joint news conference with his Sudanese and Ethiopian counterparts.

Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Ismail said it was not true that the three countries were seeking to tighten the noose around Eritrea and topple the regime of President Issaias Afeworki.

“Such accusations reflect the intentions of those who peddle them,” he said.

Ethiopia’s chief diplomat Seyoum Mesfin said Eritrea had not been excluded from the three-way grouping but “should join it on the basis of the principles we uphold and which are liable to enhance security and stability in the region. ”

The faltering peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea reached a new low earlier this week with the announcement that the start of work on marking out their disputed border had been delayed indefinitely.

Kurbi said he and his counterparts had approved “the draft founding charter of the Sanaa grouping of countries in the Horn of Africa and the southern part of the Red Sea” and would refer it to their heads of state, who will meet in Addis Ababa in the second half of December.

The regional group was set up in October last year, when Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh, his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Beshir and Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi met in the Yemeni capital.