Ethiopia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is these days accusing Eritrea for acts of “unprovoked aggression that may jeopardize regional peace and security”
Audacity and duplicity in their most extreme forms!
The indelible facts:
- Ethiopia has in essence declared a war of aggression against Eritrea when its Prime Minister announced to his Parliament on 13 October 2023 that his regime will acquire “sovereign access to the sea, through negotiations if possible and by force if necessary”.
- As illustrated in the Press Release issued at the time (link below), Eritrea responded with exemplary restraint and equanimity to underline that it will not be provoked by these perplexing pronouncements and events.
- In subsequent and repetitive campaigns to agitate and solicit support from his domestic constituencies to his war agenda, the PP’s leader invoked “Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights” as a useful precedent for what he had in mind for Assab.
- He went further to denigrate and deny Eritrea’s independence by stating that “he could not find any legal documents in all Ethiopian Government archives – the Cabinet, Parliament etc. – in relation to Eritrea’s independence”.
- His periodic and strident agitations included urging and reminding the Ethiopian Army that its core mission centered on “ensuring and maintaining the security of the Red Sea from the edge of Somalia to the Port of Massawa”.
- Taking their cue from the Potemkin Party’s Chief, senior political and military officials dwelt on provocative statements on several public events; essentially to declare that they will correct the “historical mistake” and forcefully occupy the Eritrean port of Assab as well as its entire southern coastline to secure “strategic depth” to their phantom naval force.
- And, on 27 September last month, the Ethiopian Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff openly declared that “the offensive launched in Tigray will not stop there”. He went on to state: “Mekelle is a mere stop-over, our ultimate destination is Assab; our main objective is to install our flag in the Red Sea”.
- The hysterical infatuation with the Red Sea must also be seen with previous intentions to wage a war of invasion against Eritrea but that were not publicly divulged at the time. Indeed, the PP regime did not only try to entice the TPLF to join forces for an invasion against Eritrea in confidential meetings in Djibouti and Seychelles during the Tigray War in early/mid 2022, but a confidential report issued by the EU Envoy after her visit to Ethiopia in September 2022 – a couple of months prior to the Pretoria Agreement – bluntly announced that the 2018 Peace Agreement between Eritrea and Ethiopia had become “null and void”. These were apparently sinister machinations to which Eritrea had no inkling at the time.
In brief, the Ethiopian regime has been pursuing, in effect, an unprovoked war of aggression against Eritrea for more than three years now in flagrant breach of foundational principles of international law and the UN Charter that prohibit the threat or use of force against the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another Member State.
