Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has said that Ethiopia could forge ahead with building up a democratic order once the rift in his party, the TPLF, was solved. Meles said the ruling coalition government of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) had set out to "rectify its mistakes and speed up the development activities in the country", the official Ethiopian News Agency (ENA) said on Tuesday April. Meles made the remarks during his visit to Saudi Arabia, where he met members of the Ethiopian community living in Jiddah. Asked about the riots and demonstrations which had affected Ethiopia last week, the prime minister said "full consensus" had been reached on 10 of the 11 questions raised by students in Addis Ababa university. Meles said the government had responded positively to the students' demands, according to ENA. He said some political organisations had "miscalculated" and had assumed that the EPRDF had been weakened by a recent rift, and had attempted to exploit the situation.

Addis Ababa University reopened on Tuesday, after student demonstrations escalated into riots last week. By Wednesday, few people had returned to the university, the BBC said. Local media report that hundreds of people, including students, remain in detention following a government crackdown after the riots.