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The Ethiopian government has said it has appointed a senior official in the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) as head of the interim Tigray regional administration after a peace deal ended a brutal two-year conflict.
“Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has appointed Getachew Reda as president of the Tigray region’s interim administration,” Abiy’s office said in a statement posted on Twitter on Thursday.
The announcement comes just a day after parliament removed the TPLF from an official list of terrorist organisations in a move it said would help bolster the November 2022 peace deal between the rebels and the federal government.
The TPLF, which once dominated Ethiopian politics, was officially designated a terrorist organisation in May 2021, six months after the Tigray war began.
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Getachew, an adviser to the TPLF leader, Debretsion Gebremichael, once served as communications minister in the federal government of Hailemariam Desalegn, who was prime minister from 2012 to 2018.
Under the terms of the November peace deal signed in South Africa’s capital Pretoria, the TPLF agreed to disarm in return for the restoration of access to Tigray, which was largely cut off from the outside world during the war.
Since the deal, there has been some resumption of basic services and aid deliveries to Tigray, which has faced dire shortages of food, fuel, cash and medicines.
