ISTANBUL: Turkiye will hold separate talks with Horn of Africa rivals Somalia and Ethiopia to ease tensions before a new round of Ankara-hosted talks, the foreign minister said on Thursday.

Relations between Mogadishu and Addis Ababa have soured dramatically since Ethiopia struck a controversial maritime deal in January with the breakaway Somali region of Somaliland.

The memorandum of understanding gives Ethiopia — one of the world’s biggest landlocked countries — access to the sea, but Somalia has condemned it as an assault on its sovereignty.

Turkiye, which has been conducting shuttle diplomacy between Ethiopian and Somalian foreign ministers since the summer, mediated two rounds of talks in July and August.

The third round, which was supposed to take place on Tuesday, was canceled as Turkiye’s Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Ankara would rather meet them separately before another round of talks.

“Because there are some lessons we learned from the previous two rounds of talks,” Fidan told the Anadolu news agency. 

Fidan said he would directly talk to the two parties to “bring their positions closer” and help them reach a deal.

Under the Jan. 1 deal with Addis Ababa, Somaliland agreed to lease 20 km of its coast for 50 years to Ethiopia, which wants to set up a naval base and a commercial port.

Somaliland has said Ethiopia would give it formal recognition in return, although Addis Ababa has never confirmed this.

Somaliland, a former British protectorate of 4.5 million people, unilaterally declared independence in 1991, but the international community has never recognized the move. Addis Ababa had access to a port in Eritrea until the two countries went to war between 1998 and 2000. Since then, Ethiopia has sent most of its sea trade through Djibouti.

Fidan said he was hopeful about a deal between the two rivals.

“I believe we have brought the parties closer to a certain degree. Hopefully, we will continue this ... I am hopeful,” he said.