Eritrea Reacts to Ethiopian FM’s Accusations
Eritrea, on Saturday, reacted to the Ethiopian Foreign Minister’s accusations. The Ethiopian Foreign Minister this week, addressing Foreign Policy Forum in Addis Ababa, accused Eritrea of interfering in Ethiopia and creating conflicts in the region. The Ethiopian Foreign Minister Gideon Timotheos raised following points in his speech:
- Eritrean government wants to enjoy the status of a sovereign state without the consequences and responsibilities such a status entails.
- Eritrean leadership is an instrument for all forces having hostile intentions against Ethiopia.
- Eritrea assumes that its continued statehood as a sovereign country is contingent upon Ethiopia’s insecurity, fragmentation and instability. As such the doctrine predicates Eritrea’s security on Ethiopia’s insecurity
- The Eritrean government has no interest in trying to improve the living standard of its citizens.
- Eritrean independence was something that the Ethiopian state consented to in a manner that fundamentally compromised Ethiopia’s national interest.
Eritrean Ministry of Information reacted to these five points through yesterday’s statement. The Ministry mentioned following five points in its counter statement:
1. Eritrea’s three decades war of national liberation was sparked because Ethiopia unilaterally abrogated the sham Federation and annexed Eritrea in flagrant contravention of international law.
2. Eritrea has invariably been on the receiving end for the costly and unnecessary conflicts that successive Ethiopian regime have and continue to unleash because they covet their neighbor’s land and endowments.
3. The vicious 1998-2000 border war between the two countries was unleashed by the incumbent Ethiopian regime under the putative pretext of “dispute on Badme and its environs”. The agenda of the war went beyond regaining the “disputed territory”. In the early weeks of the war, the then Deputy Foreign Minister, Tekeda Alemu, publicly announced to a gathering of the Ethiopian community in Washington that “capturing Assab” was one of the central objectives of the war.
4. Ethiopian government has irredentist agenda cloaked in “sovereign access to the sea”.
5. Ethiopian economy is overstressed and burdened by debilitating poverty in spite of over 84 billion US$ of receiving international development assistance over the last three decades; periodic IMF financial bailouts; and cyclical rounds of intensive care (Food Safety nets etc.). Currently, 21.4 million Ethiopian are in need of urgent humanitarian assistance, while 68.7% are multi dimensionally poor.
Ethiopia and Eritrea have been involved in a war of words since September 2023 when the Ethiopian prime minister raised the slogan of access to sea. The two accuse each other of training and arming proxy groups against each other.
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