Doubt over Ethiopia peace talks as Kenya envoy says won't attend

Kenya's former president Uhuru Kenyatta, a key player in African Union-led efforts to bring peace to Ethiopia, said Friday he would be skipping negotiations expected to begin this weekend, raising doubts over whether the talks would go ahead.

The bid to resolve the nearly two-year conflict comes as fierce fighting grips northern Ethiopia after a resurgence in late August shattered a five-month truce and halted aid into war-torn Tigray.

The AU has invited the warring sides to talks in South Africa that were scheduled to start on Saturday, mediated by the bloc's Horn of Africa envoy Olusegun Obasanjo, South Africa's former deputy president Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka and Kenyatta.

AU Commission chair Moussa Faki Mahamat said in a statement Thursday he had "full confidence in... the distinguished panel members to ensure constructive engagements and dialogue between the parties towards a sustainable, inclusive negotiated settlement to the conflict".

But in a sign of the challenges confronting the process, Kenyatta said in a letter to Faki he would not be attending the South Africa talks "due to conflicts in my schedule".

"However, in the interim and as you consider the possibility for another date for the peace talks, I would be grateful to receive further clarity on the structure and modalities of the talks, including but not limited to the rules of engagement for all the interlocuters invited," he wrote.

Kenyatta, who left office in August, also said the "immediate and unconditional cessation of hostilities" should be put high on the agenda.

Both the Ethiopian government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF), which have been at war since November 2020, said on Wednesday they were ready to take part in the negotiations.

But TPLF leader Debretsion Gebremichael protested that the regional authorities were not consulted before the invitation was issued, and sought clarification on what other parties would be involved, what role the international community would play and logistics such as air travel and security for their negotiating team.

Representatives of the AU, the Ethiopian government and the TPLF did not respond to AFP's requests for comment following Kenyatta's announcement.

Air strikes

Fighting has escalated in recent weeks on multiple fronts in northern Ethiopia, with several air strikes hammering Tigray.

A senior official at the region's biggest hospital said there had been a deadly drone attack on Friday on the town of Dengolat about 30 kilometres (20 miles) south of Tigray's capital Mekele.

"Total number of casualties not yet known. We have received 42 victims, five of them have died," Kibrom Gebreselassie, chief executive director at Ayder Referral Hospital in Mekele, said on Twitter.

AFP was not able to independently verify the report as access to northern Ethiopia is severely restricted and Tigray has been under a communications blackout for more than a year.

In addition to cutting aid to Tigray, which is facing crippling shortages of food, fuel and medicine, the latest upsurge in combat has drawn Eritrean troops back to the battlefield in support of Ethiopian forces, raising alarm in the international community.

In the face of the deepening conflict, the United States said its special envoy to the region, Mike Hammer, would be making his second visit to Ethiopia in as many months to seek a halt to the fighting.

Hammer, who met Kenya's newly elected President William Ruto in Nairobi on Friday, has warned that Eritrea's presence was only adding to the complications of ending the conflict in Africa's second-most populous country.

The war, which erupted in November 2020, has killed untold numbers of civilians, driven several million from their homes and triggered a deep humanitarian crisis in northern Ethiopia.

All parties in the conflict have also been accused of grave abuses against civilians, and the UN Human Rights Council on Friday voted narrowly to extend the mandate for an investigation mission by a year, despite Addis Ababa's opposition.

In its first report issued last month, the Commission of Human Rights Experts on Ethiopia said it had found evidence of widespread rights violations and that there were "reasonable grounds to believe that, in several instances, these violations amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity".