By Tesfa-Alem Tekle | Sudan Tribune
ADDIS ABEBA, ETHIOPIA – A mediation team said that the government of Woyanne regime Ethiopia has agreed to hold talks with the rebel Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) without any pre-conditions.
In January, a group of mediators drawn from 3 Oromo ethnic elders met OLF leaders, namely Dawd Ebsa and Temam Yosuf, in Amsterdam and signed with the rebel leaders a pact of agreement to come for peace talks under which the rebels agreed to accept Ethiopia’s constitution in principle.
“Meles Zenawi called us and told us in person that his country his junta is ready to hold talks with OLF” Ambassador Birhanu Dinka, one of the elders and also former UN envoy to the great lakes region said.
“Ethiopia agreed to come to negotiating table after the prime minister’s office looked deep into the Amsterdam’s pact of agreement reached between the three of us(elders) and the rebels last January” he added.
After both parties agreed to start talks, the third party has been holding meetings with different influential people abroad and at home.
Recently the elders group has held a two-day discussion with 125 influential elders drawn from different zones of the Oromiya region under which they urged the rebels to listen to their people and come to peace talks without any delay.
Ethiopia Woyanne has long designated the rebel group as a “terrorist” group and holds it responsible for a number of bomb blasts in the capital and in other southern towns.
Recently Ethiopia Woyanne has arrested a number of Oromos including an opposition leader for an alleged links to OLF “terror ring”.
The elders on a declaration called on both sides to show a genuine commitment to narrow their political difference which put the rebel group into nearly two decades of insurgency.
– ST