Participated as speaker organized by The Council on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C., February 27, 2009

I was one of the main speakers of a meeting organized by the Council of Foreign Relations, which was held in its office in Washington, D.C., on February 27th 2009, and which drew high-profile experts and officials.

The topic of the meeting was "The Future of US-Ethiopian Relations," and it was chaired by Ambassador Herman Cohen, a professor at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies. My co-panelists were Ambassador David Shinn, adjunct professor of international affairs at The George Washington University (blog), and
Ephraim Isaac, a professor at Princeton University.

In my presentation I focused on the current Ethio-American multifaceted relations from the early 1990s to the present. I explained the complex nature of these lukewarm relations from the vantage points of both countries' national interests, the fight against regional and global terrorism, and the role and implications of Ethiopia's intervention in Somalia between 2006 and 2008.

In addition, the presentation elaborated on political and economic challenges of the Ethiopian political landscape such as:

• The upcoming federal and state elections of 2010 and the challenges to the Ethiopian opposition parties


• The state of the free press and the reports of CPJ


• The human rights situation of Ethiopia and the U.S. State Department's annual report (link) which has just came out, and


• The unfinished saga of the Ethiopian-Eritrean crisis.

A number of questions and comments were made in regard to my presentation. In my responses, I assessed likely scenarios of Ethiopian-U.S. relations under the new Barack Obama administration.