A high-level Eritrean delegation arrived in Ethiopia on Wednesday, and Yemane Gebreab used the visit to say the peace was going well and was not finished. Gebreab, political affairs chief and adviser to President Isaias Afwerki, told Fana Broadcasting Corporation that the trip followed a decision Isaias announced in his Martyrs’ Day speech. He said he and Foreign Minister Osman Saleh had met Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
Two subjects came up, he said. One was the peace itself, and he described a shared view that it was proceeding well. The other was the practical work of strengthening ties between the two governments and between Ethiopians and Eritreans. He added that the peaceful relationship had already encouraged cooperation across the Horn of Africa. "No one expected that peace between the two countries will prevail in such a way," he said. He called it the result of decisions by both leaders and by both peoples, and "a big measure."
He also said building peace takes time and a great deal of work. The remarks, given in Amharic, were a reminder that the 2018 opening had moved from a handshake to a list of unfinished tasks. A year after the border war’s formal end, officials were still talking about what citizens on both sides would actually gain. Gebreab’s tone was confident, and his caveat was plain: the relationship would hold only if both sides kept working at it.
The interview, filmed for Fana and circulated the same day, put an Eritrean official on Ethiopian state-linked television talking about a relationship that had been a war a year earlier. Gebreab recalled the Martyrs’ Day speech as the moment Isaias sent the delegation, and he placed himself and Osman Saleh in the room with Abiy. The substance he offered was not a list of signed projects. It was a claim of common understanding, a promise to work on people-to-people ties, and a warning that peace is slow. For listeners in both countries, that was the news from the visit: optimism, paired with the admission that the work was still ahead.
Sources: Borkena