Eritrean News Agency (ERINA)
ERINA Update
Thursday, July 9, 1998
In a new twist to Ethiopia's inflammatory campaign of disinformation, the Addis Ababa government has accused Eritrea of "entering into agreement with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and Somalia's Al Ittihad movement to fight Ethiopia." It stated that the "agreement" was arrived at after Eritrea's President met with the OLF Secretary General last April. The Ethiopian government did not disclose why it has kept this piece of "information" secret for three months; although a few days earlier, senior TPLF leaders had confided to diplomatic sources in Addis Ababa that it was this "evidence" that mainly prompted the TPLF central committee meeting and the subsequent session of the Ethiopian parliament to issue the declaration of war against Eritrea on May 13, 1998. In an interview with the local television yesterday, Eritrea's President dismissed and rejected the accusation characterizing it as "baseless, irresponsible and sinister." No meeting of this nature took place either in April or at any other time. This fabrication is being concocted at this particular time because Addis Ababa wants to deflect mounting international pressure to resolve the border dispute through peace and legality without further recourse to force. The Ethiopian government, which has been obstructing all peace efforts through it singular demand for Eritrea's "unconditional withdrawal" from its own territory "before the start of any talks" apparently believes that this new "revelation" can provide it with a fresh pretext to escalate the war. An additional motive underlying this fabrication might also be the desire to whip up support in Tigray and within its satellite organizations in the country by deliberately distorting the root cause of the conflict. The OLF was a partner of the TPLF in Ethiopia's transitional government between July 1991 and the end of 1992, when the TPLF-OLF alliance ended. In a bid to save the partnership, Eritrea as well as the governments of the United States, Germany, Britain and Sweden made several unsuccessful attempts to broker an agreement between the two sides.