Addis Ababa - Angolan head of State João Lourenço has received praise for his role as Champion for Peace and Reconciliation in Africa.
The praise came from the Angolan Ambassador to Ethiopia Francisco José da Cruz, who stressed the Angola’s president commitment to mobilisation of political support and cooperation of the States Members.
João Lourenço, who chairs the International Conference on the Great Lakes Region (ICGLR), is also African Union (AU) mediator in Rwanda-DRC crisis.
JoãoLourenço had been in Kigali (Rwanda) and Kinshasa (DRC) over the last two days to dialogue with Presidents Paul Kagame (Rwanda)and Félix Antoine Tshisekedi (DRC), amid the tension affecting the two countries’ relations.
During the meetings with his counterparts, the Angolan statesman came up with proposals to adapt the Luanda Peace Roadmap to the new reality experienced on the common border between the countries.
Apart from leading the mobilisation of political support and cooperation of the States Members, the AU Champion is also reinforcing international support aimed at drawing greater attention to the conflict prevention, management and resolution in Africa, said the ambassador of Angola to Ethiopia, Djibouti and the country's Permanent Representative to the African Union (AU) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).
He said that under the principle of complementarity and subsidiarity, the African Summit in Malabo mandated him last May, as President of the ICGLR, to maintain contacts with the DRC and Rwanda due to the political crisis between the two countries and report on diplomatic efforts for the immediate silencing of weapons in the region and the rapid resumption of dialogue mechanisms between the two states.
Francisco José da Cruz also stressed the historical and friendly relations between Angola and Ethiopia, based on the common position on multilateralism as a way of solving global problems and Pan-Africanism to achieve the “Africa we want”, based on the implementation of the AU Agenda 2063.
He recalled that both countries signed the Bilateral Air Services Agreement in May 1977, which was supplemented by a Memorandum of Understanding in September 1998 to allow the respective airlines to carry out daily passenger and/or cargo flights between the countries’ capitals.
This cooperation, underlined Ambassador Francisco José da Cruz, is deepening, so the Angolan national airline, TAAG, benefits from Ethiopian Airlines services in the training of its pilots and maintenance of its aircraft.
