Ethiopia PM holds first meeting with Tigray leaders since peace deal

Ethiopia's PM Abiy Ahmed signs a peace treaty with neighbouring Eritrea on September 16, 2018. [AP photo]

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and other government officials held their first meeting Friday with Tigrayan leaders since a November peace deal, officials and state media said.

The two sides evaluated "actions carried out on the implementation of the Pretoria and Nairobi peace agreements so far" and discussed issues that "need further attention," the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation said.

The meeting took place at a resort in southern Ethiopia, it said.

A peace deal between Abiy's government and the Tigray People's Liberation Front, or TPLF, signed in South Africa's capital Pretoria in November last year silenced the guns in northern Ethiopia.

Under the terms of the agreement, the TPLF agreed to disarm and reestablish the authority of the federal government in return for the restoration of access to Tigray, which was largely cut off from the outside world during the two-year war.

Abiy's national security adviser Redwan Hussein said on Twitter that Abiy and other government officials "met today and held discussion with TPLF delegation regarding the progress of the peace process."

"As a result, PM Abiy passed decisions about increasing Flights, Banking & other issues that would boost trust and ease lives of civilians," he tweeted.

Since the deal was signed, there has been a limited resumption of aid deliveries to Tigray, which has long faced dire shortages of food, fuel, cash and medicines.

Basic services such as communications, banking and electricity are slowly being restored to the stricken region of 6 million people, with the national carrier Ethiopian Airlines resuming commercial flights between Addis Ababa and Tigray's capital, Mekele, last month.

While the TPLF announced it has begun disarming, local residents and aid workers say the Eritrean army and forces from the neighboring region of Amhara remain in parts of Tigray and accuse them of murder, rape and looting.

Access to Tigray is restricted, and it is impossible to independently verify the situation on the ground.