"We're getting tired of waiting for peace. We're ready to fight," Aster Tesfamariam, a 23-year-old waitress at an Asmara restaurant, was quoted as saying, summing the frustration Eritreans feel towards the US-led international community including the OAU in the so-called proximity talks -- the negotiations to end the conflict.

Why does Aster and many Eritreans feel that way? Because the Ethiopian regime is continuing to invade Eritrea with impunity. Because the world is silent. Because Eritreans see a double standard being applied to this conflict. Because the US-led international community is allowing Ethiopia to wreck havoc in the region. Because the voices and complaints of Eritreans and their government is once again being pushed aside for the sake of geo-political expediency.

Otherwise how would one explain the behavior of both the Ethiopian regime and the international community. The Ethiopian prime minister declared a week ago his war with Eritrea was "over." However, the INVASION by Ethiopia into indisputably Eritrean territories continues to this day (June 6, 2000). Ethiopia, as we speak today, is trying to push to the Eritrean port city of Assab in an attempt to capture it. Eritrea reported that on Saturday, June 3, "Ethiopia launched a large scale attack on the Assab front after Eritrea had withdrawn, unilaterally and in response to the appeal of the OAU Chairman, to 37 k.m. from its original position which stood at the established boundary between the two countries at 71 k.m.." Of course Ethiopia denies it. Ethiopia has been telling lies for two years. No surprise there.

The Ethiopian army unleashed the latest offensive at the new Eritrean army positions (37 kms from the Assab port). The OAU and the UN, instead of condemning the new attacks by Ethiopia, simply shrugged Eritrean complaints. The OAU chairman's special envoy said it was "natural" there would be "skirmishes" here and there after Ethiopia declared the war was "over". That was the most pathetic, inept, and reckless thing to say by a mediator in the conflict. Ethiopia of course said it was responding to Eritrean "provocation." How does Eritrea provoke Ethiopia after leaving the disputed border area and withdrawing 35 kms inside Eritrea? Even those with limited knowledge of military maneuvers can certainly understand that it was Ethiopia who advanced to the new Eritrean position after the latter withdrew unilaterally. Ethiopia has no business in an undisputed Eritrean territories close to the port of Assab. Why can't the international community see this for what it really is: a duplicitous lie by Ethiopia while invading a sovereign country? Is the UN condoning Ethiopian invasion? To Eritreans the answer is, yes it is. The silence of the International community and particularly the UNSC can only be interpreted as implicit agreement with the Ethiopian action. A member of the UN is invaded and the UN keeps silent! This is what frustrates Eritreans.

Ethiopia is repeating the mantra that it would withdraw from Eritrean territories as soon as the International Community gives it some guarantees. The Ethiopian prime minister in his press conference with the diplomatic corps in Addis Ababa even offered to use his army as a peace keeping force if the International community does not want to foot the bill. Talk about arrogance! An invading army would be used to keep peace on the territories that it invaded! Ethiopia simply wishes the international community would bless its naked aggression and keep quiet. Just barely a month ago Ethiopia refused to sign a cease fire and strongly opposed the OAU proposal for the deployment of international peace keeping forces in the disputed areas; instead, it preferred small observer group. Now that it is occupying not a disputed territory but undisputed Eritrean land, Ethiopia wants to sign a cease fire and would like an international peace keeping force to be deployed not in the disputed territories but in undisputed Eritrean territories, effectively making the disputed territories it now occupies Ethiopian.

For Eritreans these actions and the double talk of the Ethiopian regime are not surprising. We knew and understood their objective. What is really surprising, saddening, and hurtful is the deafening silence of the international community in the face of this naked Ethiopian invasion of undisputed Eritrean territories and the looting, burning, demolishing of home and businesses that is going on in towns and villages that the Ethiopian army have managed to occupy in the past three weeks.

Yes, the world looks on as Ethiopia invades a small country, Eritrea. The latter definitely has no oil, a la Kuwait, nor is it in Europe as in the case of Bosnia and Kosovo. Eritrea is in Africa. That explains the silence.

Some Ethiopian opposition groups in the U.S. are openly questioning the objective of Ethiopia's war against Eritrea. No, No, No! They are not against it! It is just they want to know if the Weyane regime is planning to push towards Assab to obtain an access to the Red Sea for them. Otherwise, they say, why all the thousands of Ethiopian causalities? They are willing to tolerate the heavy casualties that the Ethiopian army is sustaining as long as the objective is taking control of the Eritrean port of Assab.

If the international community particularly the UN is prepared to tolerate this blatant aggression by Ethiopia, it is then writing a chapter in a new world "disorder": that a big country such as Ethiopia may invade a smaller neighbor and force its will on it, grab any land it wants, and the world would not raise a finger. This certainly will prove dangerous and ruinous to the fragile peace of the horn of Africa and elsewhere in the world.