Negarit 2 page 5

The Ethiopian Crown Council issued a statement at the end of March which said that it was “a grave mistake” for Ethiopia to call on Iran to help mediate the current conflict between Addis Ababa and Asmara. “It can only lead to grave consequences for the future unity and stability of Ethiopia,” Crown Council President Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie said.

Prince Ermias was commenting on Iranian news agency reports which said that Ethiopian Council of People’s Representatives Speaker Dawit Yohanes had invited Iranian mediation efforts to resolve the crisis between Ethiopia and Eritrea. The Ethiopian Speaker had apparently made the remarks during a meeting in Addis Ababa with Iranian Ambassador Hussein Rajabi.

“All attempts at external mediation have thus far failed,” Prince Ermias said, “and now it has been suggested that Iran, which has been actively attempting to influence events in the Horn of Africa since 1979, should be invited into our affairs. This is untenable.”

“The Ethiopian Crown Council has, since the beginning of this conflict urged both sides to consider mediation and conflict resolution mechanisms which stay within the family of Ethiopic-speaking peoples. This has not yet even been attempted, and now Speaker Yohanes has apparently suggested inviting in a country which has made no secret of its wish to radicalize our region.”

“This does not mean that Ethiopia should treat Iran as an enemy, but it is clear that Iran is not a suitable candidate for a role in mediating the conflict.”

Prince Ermias continued: “The invitation for Iran to mediate in our problem is playing into the hands of the radicals, the same radicals who wish to see Ethiopia alienated from the main body of the world’s trading nations; the same radicals who wish to see Ethiopia dis-united and even dismembered.”

“Iran has been the major ally of Sudanese radical leaders such as Dr Hassan al-Turabi, who has advocated the dismemberment of Ethiopia even in recent months. Iran and Sudan have gone hand-in-hand in promoting radical religious politics in Africa, posing a major threat not only to moderate Ethiopian Muslims, but to moderate Muslim governments throughout Africa and the Middle East.”

“We have seen that in every arena in which Iran has become involved in recent years that religious polarization occurs. We do not want that for Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, religious tolerance and freedom — and an absence of religious radicalism — have been our strength.”

The Council President said that the ill-considered statement by Speaker Yohanes was typical of the drift and lack of a sense of national unity which has marked the current political era in Ethiopia.

“Ethiopia and the greater family of Ethiopic-speaking peoples must rally around symbols of unity, and build a sense of common purpose, ending conflict through mutual respect and a greater sense of Ethiopianness. Ethiopian common objectives need not in any way interfere with the regional, ethnic or religious differences in our community. But we need to retain a strong sense of unity in the face of external threats which are mounting daily.”

The Crown Council this month received several messages expressing concern that the Balkan war was dividing the Christian world in Orthodox and non-Orthodox blocs. A spokesman for the Council said that Ethiopians needed to re-emphasize their traditional religious tolerance.

Fighting in Borena and Sidama Shows That Ethnic Cleansing is Still Ongoing in Meles’ Ethiopia

The Meles Zenawi administration was attempting to cover up major fighting in the Borena and Sidama ethnic communities in the southern part of Ethiopia, according to a report released by the Crown Council of Ethiopia this month. According to reports reaching the Crown Council, the ongoing clashes have already claimed hundreds of lives and caused the displacement of thousands of Ethiopians in the southern region of the country.

“The clashes are the direct result of the policies of ethnic separatism — an Ethiopian apartheid — being pursued by the Meles administration,” a spokesman for the Council said. “The clashes come on top of the fighting which took place in July last year between the Gedio and Gujji peoples in Southern Ethiopia. More than 3,000 people died in that conflict. The only response by the Meles administration to that tragedy was to arrest the journalists who went to report on it.”

The Crown Council spokesman said that Prince Ermias Sahle-Selassie Haile-Selassie, the Council President, and Prince Bekere Fikre-Selassie, the Viceroy, had both expressed their distress at the current fighting and extended their condolences to the victims.

“The people of Ethiopia united and refrained from questioning the Meles policies while the country was engulfed in the war with Eritrea. Now, when the fighting subsides, the Meles administration has resumed its divide-and-rule policies at home, destroying the lives and futures of the Ethiopian people.”

“Only a policy of national unity will help restore Ethiopian peace and prosperity,” the spokesman said.

Enderassé Prince Bekere Fikre-Selassie distressed over conflict.

The war between Ethiopia and the EPLF administration in Asmara, Eritrea, had already begun to spill over into Somalia by early May 1999. Eritrean money and agitation had also begun fuelling armed Ethiopian separatist groups inside and outside the country, spurring fighting to distract Ethiopian forces [see story on Sidamo and Borena.]

Both principal contestants in the war had claimed low defense budgets and limited available funds, but weapons acquisition has continued virtually non-stop since June 1998, with no end in sight. Moreover, the weapons acquisitions include sophisticated combat aircraft still well beyond the training level of most of the air force personnel in either force.

A May 7, 1999, report by Agence France Presse noted: “Despite official denials, Eritrea is trying to destabilize Ethiopia and draw its troops away from the border by sending Ethiopian rebels to infiltrate the east of the country, from Somalia. It is also sending huge quantities of arms, according to the sources, some for use by the rebels and some by Somali factions, as Ethiopia arms their rivals.”

Ethiopian forces are now fighting on a number of fronts, including the Somali Gedo region, combating Ethiopian Islamist guerillas of the al-Itihad al-Islam movement. The Eritrean moves to arm Somali movements flies directly in the face of an April 29 UN Security Council call for all UN members to comply with the 1992 embargo on arms shipments into Somalia.

And despite Eritrea’s claims that it needs all the arms help it can get for itself, the Isayas administration is shipping massive stocks of small arms and ordnance by air and sea to the Mogadishu warlord, Mohamed Hus- sein Aideed, who is also — like his father who preceded him — a favored recipient of Iranian and Sudanese aid.

Given the recent rapprochement between Sudan and the Isayas leadership, there can be no doubting now the Iran-Sudan-Eritrea-Somali linkage beginning to encircle and threaten Ethiopia. More than this, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF), which had been languishing because Oromos had basically foresaken the radically marxist leadership, has received a new lease on life from the Eritrean financial and weapons support, and once again poses a major threat to Ethiopian stability.

As well, Isayas continues to arm the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF). Evidence of the coordinated nature of the Eritrean actions has come with the arrival of Oromo (OLF) fighters with weapons on an Eritrean ship which docked at Merca, a port in southern Somalia controlled by Aideed.

These particular forces came with heavy weapons: armored personnel carriers, heavy artillery, anti-aircraft guns, thousands of small arms and many tonnes of ammunition. The backing was also clear: 11 Eritrean officers accompanied the OLF troops.

Ethiopia has also been attempting to outflank this by supplying Aideed’s opponents, particularly the Rahanwein Resistance Army (fighting in and around the south-central town of Baidoa), the United Somali Congress/Patriotic Movement in central Somalia, and the faction of Hussein Haji Bod in the north of Mogadishu.

The Ethiopian Meles administration, meanwhile, is also fighting to retain credibility at home. It has failed to dislodge the Eritrean forces from the Yirga Triangle, despite the massive difference in the populations of the two combatants and the proportionately greater resources available to Ethiopia. And the EPLF’s Isayas has maintained the upper hand in the political war waged for international support.

The May 16 dawn raid by Ethiopian aircraft on the Eritrean port city of Massawa — damaging a naval base, an oil depot and the port — was, however, not part of the “real” war against Isayas. It was, according to Addis sources, a move to distract Ethiopian public opinion from the death in the US of the most visible of his critics, Professor Asrat Woldeyes (see page one), who died directly as a result of the Meles administration’s imprisonment and ill-treatment of him.

Everything has gone wrong for Meles: he has failed to unify the country to defeat a tiny invader; he conducts a war in part to distract from the death of a much-loved dissident whose death he caused; and he now faces strategic encirclement from an increasingly strong coalition of enemies. Simply put, how long will his colleagues support him?