NAIROBI (Reuters) - Ethiopia's defence minister travelled to Somalia on Thursday, a senior official in Mogadishu said, the first bilateral visit since relations nosedived a year ago over an Ethiopian plan to build a naval base in a breakaway Somali region.
Somalia's state minister for foreign affairs, Ali Omar, confirmed Ethiopian defence minister Aisha Mohammed Mussa's visit in a message to Reuters but did not say what she was there to discuss. Ethiopia's government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
Ethiopia has up to 10,000 troops in Somalia to fight Islamist militants from al Shabaab, but Mogadishu has threatened to expel them if Addis Ababa did not renounce an agreement it reached a year ago with the breakaway Somaliland region.
The preliminary deal called for Somaliland to lease a stretch of coastline for an Ethiopian naval base and commercial port in exchange for possible recognition of Somaliland's independence.
Somaliland has had effective autonomy since 1991 but its independence has not been recognised by any other country. Mogadishu considers it an integral part of its territory and called its deal with Ethiopia an act of aggression.
After months of escalating rhetoric and inconclusive international mediation efforts, Somalia and Ethiopia agreed on Dec. 11, after talks in Turkey, to work together to resolve the dispute and begin technical negotiations by the end of February.
The Ethiopian troops in Somalia are there as part of an African Union peacekeeping mission and on a bilateral basis. Regional powers fear their withdrawal would severely weaken the fight against al Shabaab, an al Qaeda affiliate that has been waging an insurgency since 2007.
The dispute has also raised concerns about wider instability in the Horn of Africa, with Somalia responding to the Somaliland deal by drawing closer to Ethiopia's traditional rivals Egypt and Eritrea.
(Reporting by Aaron Ross; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
