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Yemen Times
10 February 2007
SANA'A, A Yemeni-Ethiopian summit will bring together Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Ethiopian President Girma Wolde-Giorgis will be held over the next few days in Sana'a.
The summit will discuss aspects of economic cooperation and enhance the bilateral relations between the two countries.
This visit is the Ethiopian president’s first to Yemen.
The summit is set to discuss the agenda for Sana'a Congregation for Cooperation due to be held in Addis Ababa together with the agreements and understanding memorandums signed between the two countries.
Moreover, the summit will discuss the developments in the Horn of Africa and the required support for the Interim Somali government in a way that enables it to spread peace and security and reestablish state institutions.
Sana'a Congregation involving Yemen, Ethiopia and Sudan was established after a meetings held in Sana'a in October 2002 and Addis Ababa in December 2003 and another one in Khartoum in 2004, when Somalia joined the congregation. The fourth meeting was held in Aden towards the end of 2005.
The congregation called Djibouti and Eritrea to join this regional bloc, being open before all African Horn countries as it aims to revitalize the contacts between Red Sea countries.
Though it was early criticized for providing arms to some factions in Somalia, Yemen is a key element in this congregation and it plays an important role at all aspects. It called the international community to bring international forces to the disturbed Somalia.
Yemen also hosted a number of meetings to settle the disputes between all warring Somali factions and it was the first country to reopen its embassy in Somalia following to the defeat of Islamic Courts during the last war there.
Diplomats assured Yemen's future role is still unclear due to the intervention of the U.S. in Somali, which does ignore Yemeni interests altogether.