Sourcing diplomats AFP reported that Britain has circulated a draft resolution to the council on Thursday that calls for lifting the arms embargo and all travel bans, asset freezes and targeted sanctions on Eritrea.

The council is to vote on the proposed resolution on November 14, 2018, it was learned. Diplomats said they expected the measure to be adopted after the US change in position.

Eritrea and Ethiopia signed a peace deal in July, but the United States, backed by France and Britain, insisted that Eritrea would first have to show progress on respect for human rights before sanctions could be lifted.

That position, however, recently changed — a shift some diplomats said was decided by US national security adviser John Bolton, who dealt with the Eritrea-Ethiopia conflict when he served as UN ambassador.

The council slapped sanctions on Eritrea in 2009 for its alleged support to Al-Shabaab jihadists in Somalia but the draft resolution acknowledged that UN monitors had “not found conclusive evidence that Eritrea supports Al-Shabaab.”

The sanctions and arms embargo will end on the day of the adoption of the resolution, according to the text.

The peace declaration signed in July by the prime ministers of Eritrea and Ethiopia ended two decades of hostility and triggered a thaw in relations with Djibouti and Somalia that shored up stability in the Horn of Africa.

Ethiopia and Somalia had backed Eritrea’s call to end sanctions.

The draft resolution calls on Eritrea and Djibouti to continue to improve relations after the leaders met in Saudi Arabia in September to resolve a border dispute.