Eritrea calls its sovereignty “non-negotiable” and says its army is inside its own borders, in reply to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s warning

Palm trees and Italian-era buildings line Harnet Avenue in central Asmara, Eritrea, with people waiting at a bus shelter

[file photo] Harnet Avenue in central Asmara, Eritrea, November 24, 2015. Photo: Sailko via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Eritrea's Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday that its sovereignty is "non-negotiable, inviolable, and sacrosanct" and its army is entirely inside Eritrea, answering a warning Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed made two days earlier.

The statement, titled "Eritrea's Principled Position Regarding the Ongoing Situation with Ethiopia" and issued by the ministry's Research and Documentation Division on October 21, was published by the Ministry of Information on its Shabait website. DW Amharic described it as what looks like a direct reply to the Prime Minister's criticism and warning, and said the war of words between the two governments is still heating up.

In a Tigrinya-language interview that the Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation (EBC) aired on Monday, October 19, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed accused the Eritrean Government of becoming a tool of Ethiopia's enemies. "Rather than being a partner in development, serving as a launchpad for Ethiopia's enemies brings no benefit. I believe ignoring our call will bring extremely severe consequences," he said, according to DW Amharic, in Mereja's translation from the Amharic.

The Eritrean statement does not name Abiy Ahmed but puts the blame on his party. It says the instability and "atmosphere of crisis across the Horn of Africa is solely the product of a deliberate, unprovoked, and multi-year campaign of geopolitical aggression executed by Ethiopia's ruling Prosperity Party," which it accused of "military posturing, diplomatic hostility, and economic intimidation." It also says there "is no legitimate or 'good faith dispute' between Eritrea and Ethiopia."

On the accusations that Eritrean troops have crossed into Ethiopia, the ministry called them "entirely fabricated" and said the Eritrean Defense Forces (EDF) "remains stationed entirely within the internationally recognized borders of the State of Eritrea." On the long-standing complaint that Eritrean soldiers stayed in Ethiopian territory after the Pretoria Agreement, it said those areas are "sovereign Eritrea territories" awarded to Eritrea by the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) award of 13 April 2002. "Eritrea harbors zero irredentist claims," it added, while saying the country is "fully prepared and legally entitled under international law to defend its sovereignty."

The statement also turned on the foreign governments and organizations, among them the UN, the African Union, the United States and Britain, that have in recent weeks urged both countries to step back from a new war. Calls for "all parties" or "both sides" to show restraint are "legally flawed and diplomatically counterproductive," the ministry said, because they build "a false equivalence" between what it called the aggressor and the state defending its sovereignty. DW Amharic noted that Asmara does not appear to have accepted the international pressure.

Eritrea's Information Minister, Yemane Gebremeskel, shared the statement on X. A day earlier he had called Abiy Ahmed the "Potemkin Party's Prime Minister," saying the Prime Minister was "reading from a teleprompter" when he described Eritrea's economy and manufacturing as "stagnant and in decline" since independence. A Shabait commentary on Wednesday recalled that Ethiopia closed its embassy in Asmara on October 1 and expelled ten Eritrean diplomats, and that Eritrea then cut diplomatic relations.

Addis Standard reported that Eritrea's Ambassador to the United Nations, Sophia Tesfamariam, told senior U.S. diplomats there is no "crisis" between Ethiopia and Eritrea. In a post on X on October 20, she said she had "constructive engagements" with Mike Waltz, the U.S. permanent representative to the UN, and Jeffrey Bartos.

Voices on X answered the Eritrean side quickly. Musa Sheko, a Horn of Africa analyst who describes himself as a senior researcher, published a long reply to the Information Minister's economic figures. "Poverty in Ethiopia does not demonstrate prosperity in Eritrea," he wrote, asking what Eritrea's leadership has delivered to its own people after more than three decades in power. Mohamed Kheir Omer, an Eritrean writer and researcher, quoted the statement's first line and recalled that in 2018 President Isaias Afwerki said publicly that Eritrea and Ethiopia were one, that one cannot speak of a border between them, and asked Abiy Ahmed to lead both. In Tigrinya, an account posting as Fatima El Aaloui wrote that the ministry's claim that the army is fully inside Eritrea's borders contradicts reports about Eritrean forces in Tigray, while others shared the full text in Tigrinya. In French, Jeune Afrique ran an analysis titled "Éthiopie : Abiy Ahmed, la guerre permanente."

The Ethiopian Government had not answered the Eritrean statement by Thursday morning, and Mereja could not find a reply from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Government Communication Service on their official channels.

The exchange comes as the federal Government runs Tigray through a six-month Caretaker Administration announced on October 16, while its war with Fano forces in the Amhara region goes on, and as eyewitnesses told AFP, in a report carried by DW Amharic, that some Eritrean soldiers remain in Ethiopian border areas.

Dr. Meressa Kahsu, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), told DW Amharic that a war between the two countries would make the Red Sea problem even harder to solve and that there are signs the major powers are working to prevent it. Washington lifted its sanctions on Eritrea last month, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said recently that one reason was to avoid conflict by talking with both Addis Ababa and Asmara. "If you can't talk to both sides, you can't play the role of mediator," he said, according to DW Amharic, in Mereja's translation.

Eritrea calls its sovereignty “non-negotiable” and says its army is inside its own borders, in reply to Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s warning

Sources

Leave a Reply Cancel reply