Eritrea Says Ethiopia Has "Already" Declared War

Asmara, Eritrea, 21 November 2007 - Starkly similar to what Ethiopia said before its invasion of Mogadishu to remove the ICU militants, the Eritrean government has accused Ethiopia of already declaring war.

A statement in the state-owned Eritrean media accused Ethiopia of “undermining the values of international agreements and refusing to withdraw from sovereign Eritrean territories.” It replicated similar accusations by the UN against Ethiopia for not accepting the border treaty as it is. Meanwhile, the UN has also accused Eritrea of violating the term’s agreements by deploying troops in the Temporary Security Zone, which was supposed to be demilitarized.  

The aggressive accusations have recently flown from both sides as the deadline by the border commission is set to expire at the end of November. Meanwhile, the Ethiopian government is reportedly jamming radio frequencies coming from Eritrea as well as from overseas where supporters of armed groups transmit their programs. BBC Monitoring (BBCM) also said the VOA and Deutsche Welle (DW) are facing “consistent jamming of their transmissions to Ethiopia.” Armed opposition groups like the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) have often accused Ethiopia for jamming Voice of Oromo Liberation (VOL), Radio Huriya (ONLF) and other radios operating from Germany. Almost all of these media outlets of rebel groups support the Eritrean government.Some were accused of using anti-Ethiopia propaganda during the last war, including distributing an unrealistically high number of Ethiopian causalities in a time when Eritrean troops   suffered key battle loses in western Eritrean towns like Barentu and when Ethiopia took nearly a quarter of Eritrean territory in 2000.  

Meanwhile, political tensions remain high internally, in both of the impoverished African countries. In Ethiopia, the top leaders of the CUD opposition party have rejected joining the parliament and supported a US bill called HR 2003, which paints a deteriorating state of democracy in the country. The Ethiopian government was also accused by Human Rights Watch (HRW) for its counter insurgency campaign against the ONLF, which are said to have punished civilians in the Ogaden region.

In addition, Ethiopia faces a quagmire in Mogadishu where its troops are supporting the weak transitional Federal government. David Shinn, the former US ambassador to Ethiopia, recently told Jimma Times that Somalia 's TFG will not be able to stabilize Mogadishu anytime soon.

The Eritrean government   stated that Ethiopia "has already launched an aggression against the Eritrean people.” Before invading Somalia, the Ethiopian government   similarly accused the Mogadishu Islamists of “already” invading Ethiopia.

Source: Jimma Times

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