Joy in Ethiopia as Eritrea leader visits amid diplomatic thaw скачать в хорошем качестве

Joy in Ethiopia as Eritrea leader visits amid diplomatic thaw

(14 Jul 2018) Eritrea's longtime president arrived in Ethiopia for his first visit in 22 years on Saturday amid a dramatic diplomatic thaw between the once-bitter rivals. Thousands turned out in the capital, Addis Ababa, to welcome President Isaias Afwerki, whose three-day visit is the latest step in ending a long state of war. Ethiopia's reformist new prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, made a similar visit to Eritrea's capital last weekend, where he was welcomed with hugs and laughter by the president. The prime minister broke the ice last month by fully embracing a peace deal that ended a 1998-2000 border war that killed tens of thousands and left families separated. A series of diplomatic breakthroughs quickly followed as one of Africa's longest-running conflicts neared an end. Some excited Ethiopians have compared the restoration of relations with one of the world's most closed-off countries to the fall of the Berlin Wall. Telephone links have opened, with some Ethiopians calling complete strangers in Eritrea just to say hello, and the first scheduled Ethiopian Airlines flights to Eritrea begin on Wednesday. The international community has embraced the warm reunion as a welcome development in a critical and often unstable region along one of the world's busiest shipping lanes and across from the Arabian Peninsula. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...