KHARTOUM, Sudan

The deputy leader of Sudan’s Sovereign Council, Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, known as Hemedti, began a two-day official visit to Ethiopia on Saturday for talks on bilateral relations.

The talks will focus on bilateral relations between the two countries and ways of strengthening them to serve the interests of the two sides, Hemedti’s office said in a statement.

Hemedti is the first top Sudanese official to visit Addis Ababa following the escalation of a border dispute between the two neighbors after the Sudanese army captured the contested Fashaga area in December 2020.

With a 1,600-km (994-mile) long shared border, Ethiopia and Sudan face issues regarding the Fashaga Triangle, a decades-long-disputed border without hard demarcation.

The two countries along with Egypt are also engaged in a dispute on the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), which Addis Ababa is building on the Blue Nile, a main tributary of the Nile River.

*Writing by Ibrahim Mukhtar