In a belated new millennium gift to the Woyanes, an American congressman has poured cold water on their faces, waking them up from their stupor and perhaps helping them to come to their senses. This must have come as a surprise to the Meles administration, for it has put a monkey wrench to its plans of playing victim and seeking justice. The plan had sailed smoothly, especially in Africa, with consecutive OAU chairmen attempting to cater to their every whim and, what at times seemed, infantile nitpicking.

But then landed a gift in the form of an editorial in a major U.S. newspaper , the Washington Post, compliments of a Republican congressman from New York , Benjamin A. Gilman, who, without mincing words, made it crystal clear that the Woyanes need to be stopped, lest they bring war and destruction to tens of thousands of Eritreans and Ethiopians. And in what must have stunned the TPLF administration, the congressman urged the United States and the rest o f the world to "condemn" the Ethiopian government for refusing to heed repeated calls for peace.

That the world seemed indifferent to their preparations for war and that some nations and organizations were conducting business as usual with the Woyanes must have deceived them into thinking that no one was minding the store. While appearing as statesmen in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, they continued to prepare for war and amassed new recruits by the tens of thousands, using, as the congressman made it amply clear, the "we need clarifications" excuse.

The Woyanes were not starting the new millennium in a good omen. What started as a seemingly watertight case of a nation trying to retrieve its lost territories has now been transformed into a public relations nightmare. In an instant, they have been transformed from aggrieved victims to unrelenting bullies.

One wonders what they will come up with in order to neutralize the congressman's admonitions. Are they going to resort to their classic and pathetic name-calling of the people who call their bluff, or they are going to say that the he must have made it all up? What must have enraged the Woyanes is not only the fact that congressman was urging them to accept the peace plans, but he did so after pointing his finger at them, saying that they were going to be entirely responsible for the consequences if they were going to be irrational enough to march toward war.

Equally discomforting to the Woyanes is that the congressman was not only ex pressing his displeasure, but also that of the entire membership of the House International Relations Committee, of which he is chairman.

It should be of interest to the government in Addis Ababa that in his capacity as chairman of the H.I.R.C., the congressman is privy to information the rest of the world is not, which explains for his acute understanding of the "paranoid" Woyane state of mind and their desperate need for vendetta."

The Woyanes, clearly caught off guard that time, have the option of accepting the congressman's well-intended gift and spare both the peoples of Eritrea and Ethiopia an unnecessary war, or they could continue, at their own peril , to lead the war-torn region into yet another costly war.