Ethiopia prime minister has sent emissaries to Kenya and Somalia seeking to have their maritime border dispute resolved without worsening flagile diplomatic ties in the Horn of Africa.
Officials in Nairobi and Mogadishu said Abiy, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, the region’s security prefect, had scheduled a meeting for this week between presidents Uhuru Kenyatta and Mohammed Farmajo for July 13.
However, the meeting was still subject to confirmation from the two heads of state with the officials leaving it at “their diaries allowing.”
The revelations came amid intense speculation on Tuesday that Somalia had ceded ground on the dispute by giving room for out of court settlement, a path it disowned by taking the matter to the international court of Justice in 2014 where the matter is set for hearing on September 9.
However, President Farmajo office said “we unequivocally deny a change of the position of the Federal Government of Somalia on the ongoing case at ICJ.”
Describing the media reports as malicious, “The office of the Attorney General will investigate the sources of this propaganda and the fake news it embodies,” the Somalia presidency’s director of communications Abdinur Mohamed Ahmed said of the “malicious media reports.”
