Sudan’s President, Omar Al Bashir, paid a visit to Isaias Afwerki in Asmara today. Accompanying Al Bashir were Sudan’s Defense Minister and Intelligence Chief. Isaias Afwerki, as usual, broke with protocol and was not accompanied by his defense minister or chief of intelligence. The “working visit” lasted a day and Al Bashir returned back to Sudan.
Al Bashir is one of the few African heads of state who visit Isaias Afwerki who doesn’t attend African Union congresses when they are held in Ethiopia.
In 1994, Isaias Awerki, accusing Sudan of trying to destabilize Eritrea, publicly vowed to overthrow Omar Al Bashir. He declared that it was no longer his intent to seek change in the behavior of Bashir but, he told Western journalists, it was “regime change” in Sudan. Since then, the two presidents have “reconciled.”
This is the first head of state the Eritrean president has hosted since the January 21 incident when Eritrean soldiers took over the Ministry of Information to demand constitutional governance.
A similar call for constitutional governance and resignation of autocratic head of states in Sudan’s two other neighboring states, Libya and Egypt, resulted in the downfall of the regimes of Moammer Kaddaffi and Hosni Mubarak.
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