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Diplomatic sources said the Security Council held its closed-door meeting scheduled for Tuesday to discuss the conflict in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia, at the insistence of its European members, despite the request of African countries to cancel it to give more time to the African mediation.
A European diplomat, who declined to be named, said council members from the European Union (Belgium, Germany, France and Estonia), as well as the United Kingdom, wanted to “raise the issue” on Tuesday.
Earlier, an African diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that “South Africa, Niger, Tunisia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines” who had requested to hold this closed-door meeting “withdrew their request because the (African) delegates who had elected had not yet gone to Ethiopia. “
The African Union announced on Friday that three former presidents have been chosen as special envoys to Ethiopia in an attempt to mediate between the two sides to the conflict.
These delegates are Joachim Chissano, former president of Mozambique, Eileen Johnson Sirleaf, former president of Liberia, and Galima Motlanti, former president of South Africa, according to a statement from South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who currently holds the rotating presidency of the African Union.
Ramaphosa added that they would go to Ethiopia with the aim of “providing the conditions for an open national dialogue to resolve the issues that led to the conflict,” without specifying a timetable for this.
A few hours before Ramaphosa’s announcement, the UN Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, expressed his regret at the refusal of the Ethiopian authorities to any international mediation.
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