Ethiopia’s Zenawi will visit Egypt next month

Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, will visit Cairo in September for talks over a number of regional and continental concerns with officials of Egypt’s governing military council, the Egyptian Foreign Ministry has announced.

Zenawi’s visit, originally scheduled for July, will be his first since an uprising in Egypt toppled the 30 year rule of the country’s leader Hosni Mubarak last February.

According to Egypt’s foreign affairs ministry, the Ethiopian premier will meet with the head of the ruling military council Hussein Tantawi, Prime Minister Essam Sharaf and Foreign Minister Mohamed Kamel Amr, as well as several businessmen and political analysts concerned with Ethiopian-Egyptian relations.

Addis Ababa says the new military government in Egypt is moving to build better relations with Ethiopia.

Last May, Egypt sent a 48-member popular public diplomacy delegation to pave a new approach and smooth its relations with Ethiopia on their long-standing dispute over the Nile waters.

A week later, Egyptian prime minister, Essam Sharaf, arrived in Ethiopia where he held talks with senior government officials to mark a new chapter of cooperation between the two countries.

His visit was welcomed by Ethiopia as a major step forward in solving their differences over Nile water.