peace talks in ormoia28 Mar 2023 16:20
n his responses, the PM also indicated that there is an ongoing effort to resolve the near five-years old militarized conflict in the Oromia regional state that pitted federal and regional forces on the one hand and members of Oromo Liberation Army (OLA) on the other.
The need to resolve the conflict was raised by MPs from Oromia with two MPs explicitly asking the PM to respond if there were any efforts to resolve the conflict following recent calls for peaceful resolutions, including from the Oromia regional state President, Shimelis Abdissa.
Although the Prime Minister appeared to repeat his previous stance when accusing the rebels of not being “a united force”, he admitted that the recent call for peace from the Oromia regional state was decided at a party level with a formation of a committee. “The call is a continuation of that” he said, adding that “more than ten [rounds of] talks were conducted in the past.”
According to him, the approaches to resolve conflicts through talks have resulted in engagements with the Kemant and Agewo, Benishangul Gumuz and Gambella armed groups.
The OLA was designated as a terrorist organization by members of the Ethiopian parliament on May 05 2021 along with the TPLF after a decision on May 01 by the Council of Ministers that approved the resolution to designate the groups as terrorist organizations. Last week, Lencho Letta, a retired veteran Oromo politician and one of the early founders of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), called out on the federal government to remove the terrorism designation from the OLA, which the government refers to as “Shene”.
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