TPLF Will Not Heed Soft Talk
But It Will Wobble Under Meaningful Pressure

Ethiopia's Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin has resorted to his usual armor of lies and invective in his response to the article by US Rep. Benjamin Gilman. Gilman's article appeared in the Washington Post on 3 January 2000. Rather than informing his readers of his government's stance on peace, the Foreign Minister heaps insults on the congressman and fabricates facts to portray Eritrea as an "aggressor" and "rogue" nation. One would have expected the Foreign Minister to wise up and begin talking sense to his international audience after a series of strident speeches at the United Nations, the OAU and other forums in recent months. Unfortunately, his stock in trade does not appear to allow intelligent discourse and we are compelled, as usual, to respond to his lies so as to set the record straight.

1. The Foreign Minister claims that Eritrea is "training and arming terrorist groups in Somalia including Al-Ittahad, an extremist terrorist group supported by Bin Laden." The motive behind this cheap lie is transparent. The TPLF regime apparently wants to endear itself to Washington, thus this preposterous lie. Eritrea's impeccable track record against fundamentalism and extremism is otherwise well known. Indeed, Eritrea has stood at the forefront in the collective regional and international endeavors at containing fundamentalism because it is keenly aware of the immense havoc that this malaise would wreck on the social fabric of our multi-religious and multi-ethnic communities. Ethiopia too was, until recently, party to this alliance, joining Uganda and Eritrea in the informal group of frontline states against fundamentalism. Obsession with its war of aggression against Eritrea has however made it drift and lose sight of the grave strategic menace, impelling it to forge dangerous alliances with extremist groups. For the past eighteen months, the TPLF regime has been flirting with the NIF in Khartoum and propping up "Eritrean Jihad" terrorist groups. Moreover, Sheikh Al-Amoudi, the TPLF's main financier who owns large monopolistic enterprises in Ethiopia through "joint venture" arrangements with that group, is reported to have solid "links with Bin Laden providing the latter more than three million USD in protection money." (USA Today, 29 October 1999) It is thus the TPLF regime which is today deeply embroiled with fundamentalist and extremist groups.

2. The dispute between Eritrea and Yemen on the sovereignty of some islands in the Red Sea was resolved in a highly civilized and legal manner through recourse to international arbitration. Title to these islands which the Arbitration Court found to be "indeterminate until recently" has not only been settled legally, but the maritime boundary between the two sisterly countries has been delimited smoothly. Both countries have acted with utmost responsibility during the arbitration process and today they enjoy the warmest of bilateral ties. They have recently reaffirmed the prior commitments that they made to abide by the verdicts of the Tribunal. Hence, if anything, the civilized manner in which this dispute was resolved is a big lesson that TPLF leaders should learn from as they fight, right and left, with their neighbors.

As far as Eritrea's problem with the Sudan is concerned, the cause was briefly mentioned above. More pointedly these days, as Khartoum appears engaged in an internal process to revise the fundamentalist policy that it has been pursuing for the last ten years, President Bashir has publicly acknowledged that "relations with Eritrea deteriorated largely due to the policies of the dual leadership in Khartoum."

3. The TPLF regime is perhaps the only country in the continent that has willfully violated the fundamental principle of the sanctity of colonial boundaries when it unilaterally drew a new map of Tigray incorporating large tracts of sovereign Eritrean territory in 1997. This violation of international law, which was accompanied by intermittent acts of aggression to create facts on the ground, was the cause that triggered the conflict. The TPLF's recalcitrance towards independent investigation--embodied in the OAU peace package--emanates from this fact. Moreover, the TPLF is guilty of gross violation of human rights that borders on ethnic cleansing. It has expelled, in the most inhumane manner, close to 70,000 ethnic Eritreans for no reason other than their ethnicity. This is unprecedented in our region. The TPLF has also violated the Vienna Conventions to break into the residence of the Eritrean ambassador to the OAU. The TPLF thus has no business preaching to others the virtues of international law.

4. Finally, it must be recognized that the TPLF's problem is not with the Technical Arrangements but with the notion of peace itself. The truth is that the TPLF has never accepted in good faith the various peace packages in the past. If the TPLF announced its acceptance of the US-Rwanda recommendations, this was only with a view of gaining diplomatic mileage at the time. Why else would it bomb Asmara on 5 June 1998, only hours after Eritrea expressed certain reservations on an "incomplete process"? At any rate, Ethiopia's Prime Minister has publicly stated last December that the TPLF will never contemplate peace unless Eritrea "recognizes and declares the disputed areas as sovereign Ethiopian territory." In other words, the TPLF categorically rejects demarcation, which is the only basis to resolve the border dispute.
From the foregoing, it is clear that the minority TPLF regime in Ethiopia continues to defy international law and international will with impunity. It will not come to its senses with soft talk alone. What is required and timely is tangible, deterrent action.


Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Asmara, 11 January 2000