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Addis Ababa(ANN)-The Sudanese government has launched a plan to end the bloody conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray region.

The Sudan’s Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok visited Ethiopia briefly on Sunday with what three senior Sudanese government officials said was an offer to broker a ceasefire in its northern Tigray region, a proposal Ethiopia said was unnecessary because fighting had stopped. according a Reuters report.

Hamdok, who was accompanied by Sudanese security officials, planned to present his concerns about threats to Sudan’s security along its border with Tigray during the visit, the officials said. However, Hamdok returned within a few hours from what Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed had earlier described as a two-day trip. said Reuters news agency reported.

Fighting erupted on Nov. 4 between Ethiopia’s government and the then-governing party in Tigray, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Thousands of people are believed to have been killed and more than 950,000 displaced, some 50,000 of them into Sudan, according to U.N. estimates.

Abiy government declared victory over the TPLF after its forces took control of the regional capital, Mekelle, on Nov. 29. The TPLF has said it is continuing to fight from mountains surrounding Mekelle and there are still no signs that the fighting has stopped.

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Accounts from all sides are near-impossible to verify because most communications to Tigray have been down since the conflict began. The government has restricted access for journalists and foreign aid agencies.

Abiy welcomed Hamdok, and later tweeted that he and the Sudanese delegation had good discussions, “during which we reached an understanding on various issues that will further augment cooperation between our two countries”.

He made no mention of an offer from Sudan to broker a ceasefire or mediate the Tigray conflict.

READ: Ethiopia is a path of ethnic warfare and is on the path of the Collapsed Yugoslavia

“Mediate what?” Billene Seyoum, Abiy’s spokeswoman, said when asked by Reuters for information about this offer.

“The military altercation has ceased with the command of Mekelle … The provisional administration has [been] set up and a regional council formed in Tigray.”

“Remnants of the criminal clique have fled,” she added, referring to the TPLF.

Reuters has been unable to contact TPLF officials for nearly a week.

The first non-governmental aid convoy since fighting started arrived in Mekelle on Saturday, and a government-appointed transitional administration said it would take office on Sunday.

Sudan’s cabinet said that Hamdok and Abiy had agreed to resume negotiations within the next week about the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, an issue that has caused tensions between the two countries.

READ: Tigray spokesman Getachew Reda says thousands of Ethiopian soldiers and militias killed

Ethiopia says electricity from the $4 billion dam will help create jobs but Sudan and Egypt worry it will restrict their access to Nile waters.

Hamdok and Abiy also agreed to call a meeting of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an East African regional bloc that Hamdok currently chairs, the Sudanese cabinet said in a statement according to Reuters..

Ethiopia has rebuffed previous offers to mediate in the Tigray conflict, including from the African Union. It accuses the TPLF of leading a renegade administration that launched a surprise attack on federal troops stationed in Tigray on Nov. 4. TPLF leaders deny they started the conflict.

Regional experts have suggested that Sudan could use its control over key border crossings as leverage to press both sides in Ethiopia to talk. But there are no public signs it is doing so by Reporting Reuters.

READ: Sudan Will Decide the Outcome of the Ethiopian Civil War

Sudan’s PM arrives in Addis Ababa for solution to the Ethiopian conflict after U.S. senators have called on their government to consider imposing sanctions on any political or military officials found responsible for human rights violations during a month of conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region last week.

It was the first such call by U.S. lawmakers since war between Ethiopian federal forces and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) broke out on Nov. 4.

 

The conflict is thought to have killed thousands and displaced more than 950,000 people, according to United Nations estimates, about 50,000 of them into Sudan.

Concern has mounted over reports of civilians targeted by both sides. That poses a policy dilemma for the United States, which considers Ethiopia an important ally in a volatile region, especially against al Qaeda-linked Islamist militants al Shabaab in neighbouring Somalia.

The proposed resolution was introduced on Wednesday by Senator Ben Cardin, a Democrat, and Senator Jim Risch, a Republican.

“The ongoing fighting in Tigray has already cost thousands of lives and created a humanitarian crisis of disastrous proportions, threatening the long-term stability not only of Ethiopia, but the entire region,” Cardin said in a statement.

On the other hand the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Wednesday called events in Tigray “worrying and volatile” and and called for independent monitoring of the human rights situation.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s spokeswoman Billene Seyoum responded on Thursday that there was “nothing volatile about Tigray or Ethiopia”.

“The federal government is well equipped and able to restore order,” she said.

A spokesman said the government will investigate any reports of atrocities or mass killings, but rejected independent investigations as long as Ethiopia is able to do them itself.

The Ethiopian army has captured Tigray’s regional capital Mekelle and declared victory, but TPLF leaders say they are fighting back from mountains around the city.

Accounts from all sides are difficult to verify because most phone and internet connections to the region have been down throughout the conflict. Foreign journalists cannot leave the capital, Addis Ababa, without permits.

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