Saudi Arabia-Eritrea: Afwerki visits Riad, focus on the Red Sea and regional interests
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The goal is to build and consolidate an alliance that will allow the influence of Iran, Turkey and Qatar to be contained in the Arabian Peninsula
February 28 2023
The President of Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki, left this afternoon for Saudi Arabia, where he will make a two-day working visit at the invitation of the Riyadh government. The information minister and government spokesman reports it on Twitter.
Yemane Meskel reported, adding that the parties will hold consultations
on strengthening bilateral ties as well as on regional and international issues of mutual importance.
The Eritrean president's visit to Riyadh follows those made in recent weeks to Kenya and Sudan, in an unusual opening to international travel which, however, remains focused on regional interests. Friendship with Eritrea – a country with 1.150 kilometers of coastline facing the Red Sea – is in fact precious to all intents and purposes for Riyadh, which together with the United Arab Emirates has been engaged for years now in an operation to strengthen ties with the African and Middle Eastern countries bordering the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, including Egypt, Djibouti, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen and Jordan.
The rapport of Saudi Arabia with Eritrea, strengthened in recent years, is part of Riyadh's wider aspirations on the one hand to open up to the commercial routes of the Red Sea - among the busiest in the world - on the other to build and consolidate an alliance that allows contain the influence of Iran, Turkey and Qatar in the Arabian Peninsula. Thus, in December 2020 an Eritrean delegation led by Afwerki himself was received in Riyadh by Saudi Foreign Minister Faisal Bin Farhan Al Saud and the crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman.
In September two years later, Afwerki congratulated Al Saud himself on his appointment as prime minister, emphasizing in his message,
Relations between Asmara and Riyadh have strengthened in particular after the peace agreement signed in 2018 between Ethiopia and Eritrea, at the end of a process observed with a watchful eye by Saudi Arabia, which hosted some meetings of the preparatory dialogue. Since then, President Afwerki has made numerous trips to Saudi Arabia, as has his Foreign Minister, Osman Saleh, also receiving a Saudi delegation visiting Asmara led by Foreign Minister Adel el-Jubeir.Eritrea's full confidence in strengthening good fraternal ties between the two countries.