British Prime Minister David Cameron to visit Ethiopia

Addis Ababa, February 27, 2016 (GSN) - Prime Minster and the Foreign Secretary of the British government will visit Ethiopia, Mr. Oliver Robbins, Second Permanent Secretary of the U.K Home Office, said without revealing the exact date.

Mr. Robbins made the statement here today while conferring with Dr Tedros Adhanom, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia., where they discussed on various issues, ranging from migration to regional peace and security.

The permanent secretary on the occasion appreciated the government of Ethiopia for its commendable leadership roles in the region, particularly on migration issues.

He said his country had a keen interest to build relationship with Ethiopia on migration issues as Ethiopia is hosting hundreds of thousands of refugees.

Dr. Tedros welcomed U.K’s support for Ethiopia and underscored the importance of deepening operational partnerships on migration as well as other technical and development endeavors.

He said Ethiopia is ready to cooperate on the issue of migration, which is currently hosting more than 800,000 refugees.

The Minister emphasized that Ethiopia has an open door policy for those seeking humanitarian assistance and his country is all set to help even if there are some resource constraints.

Dr Tedros highlighted that Ethiopia is a source, transit and destination for migrants and for this reason his government had devised a comprehensive program to alleviate such problems from the grassroots and assured the existence of political will as those programs are led by the Prime Minister and his deputy.

He added that, his country is exerting its level best to alleviate poverty and speed up the economic growth, creating ample employment opportunities and on top of everything; working on change of mindset in order to show that Ethiopia is a land of opportunity.

As a transit to migrants, Ethiopia is working to track and dismantle the highly sophisticated network of illicit human traffickers and closely working with neighboring countries to this effect.

Stressing that, there shall be a coordinated action or else no country could make a significant strand, Dr. Tedros called for enhanced EU support and funding. “Moving to emergency issues without addressing the root cause such as poverty alleviation will not work; if not it would be a mere firefighting,” the Minister added. (FBC)

 

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