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Obama set to address security, rights in Ethiopia

Will meet with president, other regional leaders

President Obama laid a wreath Saturday at a memorial to victims of the 1998 bombing of the US Embassy in Nairobi.Doug Mills/New York Times

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — President Obama is making the first-ever visit by an American president to Ethiopia, where he will meet with the country’s leaders about security matters and human rights, and also address the African Union.

Obama arrived in the capital of Addis Ababa from Kenya, where he made a historic return to the country of his father’s birth.

Obama planned meetings with Ethiopia’s president and prime minister, and a separate session with regional leaders to discuss the situation in South Sudan, a young nation gripped by turmoil since civil war broke out in December 2013.

While in Kenya, the president urged officials to end corruption and improve human rights, and he is expected to deliver a similar message during his two days of meetings with leaders in Ethiopia.

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Human rights groups have criticized the president for visiting Ethiopia, which is accused of cracking down on dissent, sometimes violently. Opposition party supporters, journalists, and others have been arrested as part of the crackdown.

White House officials have defended the decision to travel to Ethiopia, saying that the president would challenge the Horn of Africa country to do better, while noting that the Addis Ababa government is vital to US counterterrorism efforts in the region.

The Ethiopian political crackdown has extended to US citizens. A federal lawsuit is challenging whether the African country can spy on an American by turning his computer into a recording device.

The suit alleges Ethiopian government agents intercepted months of the Maryland man’s Skype calls and his family’s Internet activities. The man, an Ethiopian native who is now a US citizen, helps out a political opposition group outlawed in his home country.

In Nairobi on Sunday, Obama declared Kenya at a crossroads between promise and peril. He pressed the nation to root out corruption, treat women and minorities as equal citizens, and take responsibility for its future.

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Closing his historic visit with an address to the Kenyan people, Obama traced the arc of the country’s evolution from colonialism to independence, as well as his own family’s history here. Today, Obama said, young Kenyans are no longer constrained by the limited options of his grandfather, a cook for the country’s former British rulers, or his father, who left to seek an education in America.

‘‘Because of Kenya’s progress — because of your potential — you can build your future right here, right now,’’ Obama told the crowd of 4,500 packed into a sports arena in the capital of Nairobi. But he bluntly warned that Kenya must make ‘‘tough choices’’ to bolster its fragile democracy and fast-growing economy.

Obama’s visit to Kenya, his first as president, captivated a country that views him as a local son. Thick crowds lined the roadways to watch the presidential motorcade speed through the city Sunday, some climbing on rooftops to get a better view. The audience inside the arena chanted his name as he finished his remarks.

The president left Kenya on Sunday afternoon, pausing longer than normal atop the stairs to Air Force One to wave to the crowd, a huge grin on his face. He arrived two hours later in Addis Ababa, where he met with diplomats at the US Embassy in the evening.

Obama has written emotionally about his first visit to Kenya as a young man nearly 30 years ago, and he recounted many of those same memories in his remarks Sunday. The battered Volkswagen his sister drove. Meeting his brothers for the first time. The airport employee who recognized his last name.

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‘‘That was the first time that my name meant something,’’ he said. The president barely knew his father, who died in 1982 after leaving the United States to return to Kenya.