Horn

HORN OF AFRICA NEWSFILE

Ethiopian and Eritrean Forces Exchange Heavy Fire
Leaders Say Clash Dims Prospects for Peaceful Resolution of Border Conflict

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 10, 1998; Page A20

ADIGRAT, Ethiopia, June 9 -- The latest fragile peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia was fractured today when cannons and Soviet-made tanks battled it out in a rapturously beautiful setting a tourist might have mistaken for the Grand Canyon.

In a remote highland border area that looks like the American Southwest, the feuding neighbors exchanged heavy fire in a long day of fighting that put an emphatic end to two days of no significant military action. The leaders of both nations said the clash further dimmed prospects for a peaceful resolution to the conflict over who owns a 160-square-mile triangle of border land a couple of hours west of here.

"A bleak escalation of the conflict on the ground is the problem, but we are willing to discuss peace," Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki told the Reuters news agency today. He discounted a peace plan that U.S. and Rwandan diplomats helped broker last week that Ethiopia has accepted. But Issaias said he is willing to talk directly to his counterpart, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

Here in the battle zone, chipper Ethiopian commanders called the day a setback for the Eritrean military, which by their account sent wave after wave of soldiers through the rocky streets of a border town called Zalambessa, only to see them retreat under Ethiopian fire. The Eritreans insisted, however, that they held the upper hand, Reuters reported.

The town has stood empty, according to Ethiopia, since Eritrea drove Ethiopian forces from it last week. Eritrea's effort to occupy the no man's land was thwarted again and again, according to Ethiopian officials, who said the Eritreans suffered heavy casualties.

"Very many Eritrean soldiers died," Turfu Kidane Mariam, the top elected official in the zone where the fighting took place, told journalists today. "They tried to move into our place three times today; three times they failed."

"They have been pushed back a fourth time," Col. Kiros Fetiwi reported a half-hour later, surveying the landscape before him from the crest of a ridge. At his back lay Adigrat, the next town down the road from the Eritrean border and a small showpiece in Ethiopia's hopeful Tigray state. Adigrat is home to a new pharmaceutical plant, a major petroleum depot and 35,000 people, all exposed on the floor of a valley, down which the sickening thud of artillery carried all morning.

In the other direction lay the panorama of canyons, buttes and plateaus where the day's fighting still raged. While Fetiwi spoke, plumes of dust rose from the nearest plateau, where six of Ethiopia's 130mm howitzers pointed north. "That is Eritrea," a private said, pointing to the line of blue mountains that formed the horizon.

Fetiwi led reporters past the howitzers and a pair of Soviet-made mobile Katyusha rocket launchers known as "Stalin's organs" because of their crude resemblance to a pipe organ. He stopped briefly in the village of Fatsi, where one Eritrean shell had leveled a stone house and another had killed a child, according to an Ethiopian soldier there.

On a ridge a few miles farther north, Zalambessa lay just visible in the distance, looking nearly as exposed as Adigrat. "We are still counting the dead," Fetiwi said when asked about Eritrean casualties; he said Ethiopian casualties were relatively light. Another officer said Eritrea lost four Soviet-made T-62 tanks and several of its soldiers were taken prisoner.

Both armies have well-stocked arsenals left over from the Cold War, when Ethiopia was generally pro-Western before becoming a Soviet client state in 1974. Many of the Soviet-supplied weapons went to Eritrea, which had been an Ethiopian province, when it was granted independence in 1993. The nations had been close allies until May 6, when Eritrean troops crossed an undefended border to claim the disputed territory.

Leaders Personify Clash in Horn of Africa
Erstwhile Allies' Tensions Parallel Conflict Between Ethiopia, Eritrea

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 17, 1998; Page A20

BADAME, Eritrea -- On the near ridge, dug in along either side of a Soviet-made tank, are the forces of Eritrea, a spanking new nation that two months ago was still being hailed the world over for putting its energies into development instead of war.

On the far ridge, where the percussive thump of mortar fire now rises, is the army of Ethiopia, an ancient country that until recently was another prime example of President Clinton's "African renaissance."

And between the two ridges lies three miles of what has brought two of America's favorites to lethal blows -- a dusty terrain of termite mounds, goatherds and bushes just tall enough for a camel to graze upon comfortably.

How the two old friends got into a war over this strip of land remains a mystery even to the men who started it, they say.

"It's very difficult to easily find an answer," said Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki.

"I was surprised, shocked, puzzled," said Meles Zenawi, prime minister of Ethiopia.

If the two sides fail to figure it out, the last remaining island of stability in the Horn of Africa will be Djibouti, a former French colony the size of New Jersey. Somalia, with no central government, is ruled in sections by warlords. And the vast Sudan, which the United States has dubbed a terrorist state, is under assault by rebels the Clinton administration has encouraged by sending such "nonlethal" military aid as radios and combat boots by way of adjoining states, including Ethiopia and Eritrea.

But now they are fighting each other.

"It's a dangerous neighborhood," said Susan Rice, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for Africa, who spent weeks trying in vain to head off the war. "If they don't resolve it peacefully, it's a step backward in Africa's recent progress that we have been so determined to support. How big a step backward I don't think we'll know for a while."

Some of the damage was stanched Monday when both sides heeded Clinton's personal call to stop bombing each other. The cease-fire applies only to the air war, which in several rounds of raids over the last 11 days has produced mostly civilian casualties. The deadliest raid occurred in the Ethiopian city of Mekele, where Eritrea dropped cluster bombs near a school.

"It was not intentional," Issaias said in an interview.

Diplomatic efforts are now focused on halting the ground war, which last week raged on three fronts, including this section of the disputed territory. The United States and Rwanda continue to try to broker a peace plan that Ethiopia already has embraced. This week, Issaias and Meles will meet with four African heads of state dispatched by the Organization of African Unity in an effort to sort things out.

This scrubby terrain is a likely starting point. It was here, more than 20 years ago, that the future governments of both countries first threw in their lot together. Eritrea was a province of Ethiopia at the time, and a rebel group co-led by Issaias was battling to liberate it. A second insurgent group was forming in the adjoining province of Tigray, and on the day they joined forces the Eritreans presented their new allies with a symbolic gift of 11 rifles not far from where they are now fighting.

At the time, the common enemy was the Ethiopian government headed by Col. Mengistu Haile Mariam, a Marxist regime so brutal that some historians hold it responsible for 1 million deaths. When it was finally defeated by the combined rebel forces in 1991, the new Ethiopian government headed by Meles gave Eritreans the option to secede. The referendum was overwhelming; the formal 1993 separation almost serene.

At the time, both sides say, neither paid much attention to the border. The outlines of Eritrea were established by Italians who colonized it in the late 19th century, and who gave the region its separate identity. To keep border disputes at bay, many African states uphold the integrity of colonial boundaries.

But between Ethiopia and Eritrea, proprietorship over several regions remained vague. One was the area known as Badame. Within Eritrea on maps, it continued to be administered by Ethiopia after Eritrean independence. That caused no conflict until last year, when Ethiopia did two things. It printed maps showing Badame in Ethiopia -- even on the country silhouette on the national currency, the birr -- and sent border police to enforce the new boundary.

"The suspicion was growing," Issaias said.

The key conflict occurred May 6, when a handful of Eritrean troops were killed in the disputed territory. Ethiopian officials maintain that the flash point came when the Eritreans refused to leave their weapons behind when crossing the border. Eritrean officials say their forces were challenging an Ethiopian crew that was moving boundary markers farther into Eritrean territory.

In any event, the clash prompted urgent talks between the two governments. Meles, the Ethiopian prime minister, said he believed the delegations had agreed formally to address the territorial issue in two months. "There was the usual friendly chat and celebration and all the rest," he said.

Then, two days later, the Eritreans moved tanks into the disputed territory. "It sort of reminds me of what happened just before the attack on Hawaii," Meles said.

Told of the comparison to Pearl Harbor, Issaias made a face. "People tell stories," he said, then he repeated his own recent suspicions about previous border violations by Ethiopian forces that he had accepted at the time, he said, as innocent.

The two leaders, once close, have not spoken in weeks. Speculation is rife that the dispute between their nations is actually between them.

Ted Dagne, a Congressional Research Service analyst who monitors both countries closely, said the problem escalated dramatically when the two leaders stopped speaking. "I think the relationship between Ethiopia and Eritrea is based largely on the relationship between Meles and Issaias," Dagne said. "When that relationship basically collapsed, you had a total breakdown in communications."

Others, especially in Ethiopia, suggest the war has at least some of its roots in recent economic tensions. After Eritrea introduced its own currency, the nakfa, last November, Ethiopia insisted that what had been wide-open trade between the countries be conducted in dollars. Eritreans complained that letters of credit were being required and new duties levied.

"They would stop the truck on the road to the border and take chickens out for taxes," said Daniel Mehretead, a businessman in the Eritrean capital, Asmara.

Whatever lay at the heart of the matter, the surface has sullied the reputations of at least two of Africa's "new generation of leaders." Meles said the image may have been simplistic in the first place.

"If the image was [that] there is now a leadership in Africa that is incapable of making mistakes, even blunders, if that was the image, then this is clearly going to be a letdown," he said.

"If the image was a more nuanced one, then this is just a tragic blip."

When Friends Fall Out
Despite Historic Ties, Ethiopia and Eritrea Gird for War

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Wednesday, June 24, 1998; Page A19

NAIROBI, June 23 -- It may be a war no one wants, over land rich mostly in dust, between peoples who until recently regarded each other as brothers and sisters in arms. But the conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea shows no signs of ebbing and many of hardening.

"There will have to be a few more battles, I'm afraid," a senior adviser to Eritrean President Issaias Afewerki said with a sigh earlier this month. And in the following days, while diplomats from a half-dozen countries fanned fading hopes of peace, both sides continued moving troops to the front.

There were other movements as well. More than 700 Eritreans who had been living in Ethiopia were loaded onto trucks and driven hundreds of miles to the border. As many as 5,000 more await a similar fate after having been rounded up by Ethiopian authorities and detained in a pair of open camps near Addis Ababa, the capital, according to Human Rights Watch/Africa. The New York-based advocacy group condemns the expulsions as harassment of civilians.

"Only men," said Human Rights Watch's Suliman Baldo of those expelled. "They've left families alone."

The Ethiopian government calls the forced expulsions militarily necessary. Selome Taddesse, the government's spokeswoman, said Ethiopia has targeted local officials of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, the party that rules Eritrea -- and has an office in Addis Ababa -- as well as an Eritrean community organization and business people suspected of supporting the enemy effort.

In addition, Eritreans in "security-sensitive posts," such as telecommunications and the electric company, were obliged to take one month's "leave" but were not forced out of the country, Selome maintained. More than a half-million Eritreans live in Ethiopia, by the government's count.

The Eritrean government admits to no similar policy toward the estimated 100,000 Ethiopians who reside within its borders. But many of them have been lining up outside the Ethiopian Embassy in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, in search of the documentation that would assure them reentry into their home country if they are forced out of Eritrea.

In their way, the expulsions represent the most confounding fracture yet in relations between the two countries, erstwhile allies whose populations, militaries and fates appeared bound tightly together as recently as a few weeks ago.

"We didn't think a thing like this could happen," said Solomon Abraha, a travel agent in Asmara. "I'm still not out of the surprise of it."

The complications only begin with the fact that the governments of both Ethiopia and Eritrea grew out of rebel movements that in 1991 together defeated a repressive Marxist regime ruling Ethiopia. Eritrea, which had been an Ethiopian province, voted to become independent and became a nation in 1993. The neighbors maintained an open border, and the level of official trust was such that the authors of one military reference book cautioned readers that the arsenal of one might be shared with that of the other.

What makes the specter of mass expulsions so confusing is the extent to which heritage is shared as well. Even Eritreans and Ethiopians sometimes have trouble telling one another apart. As Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin declared in defending the "very few" expulsions, the countries are linked by "blood, culture, history, economy, trade and all other sectors."

Intermarriage has been commonplace for generations, especially between Eritreans and natives of Tigray, the northwestern Ethiopian region that gave birth to the Ethiopian rebel movement and borders Eritrea. In fact, the mother of Eritrea's Issaias is from Tigray, and an Eritrean gave birth to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The two men, who for years led their rebel forces in concert with one another, have had a falling out. Today, Meles threatened to teach his former ally "a lesson."

The years of shared struggle are remembered in the trenches. "The fact that the people of Tigray are our friends is always in the grapevine," said Negusse Beya, an Eritrean prisoner of war made available to reporters by Ethiopian officials. "In fact, some say our brotherhood, our friendship was sealed by the blood of two peoples. But they also say that the real problem is Badame."

Badame is the heart of a 160-square-mile section of land that each country claims the other is trying to steal. It is remote and semi-arid, but the struggle for it summons twin rallying cries of national sovereignty.

"I'm very glad and very happy that I was on the side of the Eritrean struggle for independence," said Kiros Fetiwi, a colonel in the Ethiopian army, after a day spent directing attacks on Eritrean forces arrayed in the border town of Zalembessa. "But now they have invaded our sovereignty, and I will struggle against them at the level I struggled before."

Not every Ethiopian expresses such happiness about an independent Eritrea, the creation of which left Ethiopia without access to the Red Sea. And as Ethiopians rally to the flag, Eritreans worry aloud that the border dispute may become an excuse to try to reverse history.

They were disquieted by heavy fighting on the road to Assab, an Eritrean port hundreds of miles from the disputed area around Badame, and took no comfort from a recent rapprochement between Meles's government and an expatriate group called One Ethiopia. The group is composed largely of members of Ethiopia's historically elite Amharic ethnic group, which has been harshly critical of the current government. But at a Washington meeting June 14 the group welcomed Ethiopia's U.S. ambassador and vice minister of foreign affairs.

A former high-ranking Pentagon official said the reconciliation "could be real dangerous." James L. Woods, a former deputy assistant secretary for African affairs at the Pentagon, said: "The Amharic is saying this is a chance to get the sea coast back. They're trying to goad Meles into all-out war."

E. Africans Trade Fire, Blame As Violence Escalates
Ethiopia and Eritrea Each Claim to Be Victim

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Tuesday, February 9, 1999; Page A09

NAIROBI, Feb. 8—In picking up the gun, Ethiopia and Eritrea have not exactly set aside the word. Even as their considerable armies shell, bomb and strafe each other across miles of trench lines, the battle to define the frontier between the Horn of Africa neighbors is running parallel with a pitched struggle to define who the aggressor is.

In a war being fought in remote, semiarid hills, the most visible front is the public relations front.

Today, both sides agreed upon where the real blood flowed: on the same portion of disputed border where war erupted last May and reignited on Saturday morning after an eight-month cease-fire, and on a second front near the small Eritrean town of Tsorona, gateway to a strategically important larger town halfway to Asmara, the Eritrean capital.

The enemies also agreed that Ethiopia supported its troops with warplanes and shelled a town called Adiquala. Ethiopia claimed to have destroyed a radar station there. But in the statements issued by each nation, the day's events were secondary to the question that has preoccupied both governments since long before the first shot was fired -- namely, who fired the first shot.

Eritrea's Foreign Ministry proclaimed in today's "Update on the Faltering Ethiopian Offensive": "After claiming for the past two days that the current large-scale attacks were initiated by Eritrea, [the Ethiopian government] has now been forced to admit -- by the weight of incontrovertible evidence -- that it is the party which has unleashed the offensive."

Meanwhile, Ethiopia's official spokeswoman repeated her government's line blaming Eritrea for the "full-scale attack" that started it all. The world may never know who is right. Satellite photos betray only troop movements, not the opposing fire that might have provoked them. Electronic intercepts of military radio transmissions surely could tell the story -- "especially stuff like, 'They're attacking! They're attacking!' which you always get at the start of these things," one analyst said.

But such intelligence, even if gathered by U.S. eavesdropping apparatus, rarely becomes public in African wars, especially those that involve a U.S. ally. And the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict involves not one ally, but two. "We're trying to stare down the middle," said an Africa specialist in Washington who asked not to be named. "There are no bad guys. They're all friends of ours who have temporarily taken leave of their senses." Each country clearly craves the moral high ground. Analysts agree that both sides are so preoccupied with the question of who fired first because almost nothing else about the conflict is clear.

The border dispute at the nominal heart of the fight is a mare's-nest of counterclaims supported by competing colonial maps. And the dynamic between the formerly friendly nations -- part of the same country until Eritrea became independent nearly six years ago -- is as nuanced, personal and bitter as any family feud.

Yet both sides appeared truly shocked when the crisis erupted in May. After a violent but tiny skirmish, Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki sent tanks to occupy landthat been more gently claimed by each country for years. Since then, the lines on each side have hardened -- diplomatically, with the successive failure of peace attempts by the United States, the United Nations and the Organization of African Unity (OAU) -- as well as militarily. Each side has an estimated 200,000 troops in service. "You can't, in the end, follow it logically," said a relief official in Nairobi. "At the end of the day, it's not who started it, but why it started in the first place. It's amazing that after nine months it's as unclear as it was in May."

The high ground changed hands frequently when fighting broke out in June. Ethiopian officials stewed when their airstrikes on the Eritrean capital dominated the first television images of the conflict. Days later, Eritrean officials winced at coverage of their own planes bombing civilians at Mekele in northern Ethiopia, a strike that hit a primary school. In the uneasy truce that followed, Ethiopia courted sympathy by printing full-color posters of the carnage and distributing equally graphic booklets, but it expressed impatience with international criticism of its policy of forcibly expelling Eritrean citizens by the tens of thousands.

Eritrea, meanwhile, was widely viewed asstalling, repeatedly asking for "clarification" of the OAU peace plan that Ethiopia accepted early on. In the new year, Ethiopia announced its impatience in terms that grew so steadily stronger that when fighting broke out -- on territory Eritrea had occupied since May -- it was widely assumed to have been launched from the Ethiopian side.

"Everyone knows they started this," said Yemane Ghebreab, a senior Eritrean official. "I disagree with that," said Selome Taddesse, the Ethiopian government spokeswoman. She argued that recent events -- including U.N. Security Council adoption of the peace plan and a plea by the head of the OAU for Eritrea to sign it -- were effectively isolating Eritrea. "Their style of public relations is to win the international community at any cost; if they have to lie, [they] lie," Selome said. "We have waited for nine months. We were in no rush to start this thing, especially when things were going toward us."

Former Friends

Recent events in Ethiopia -- Eritrea relations:

May 21, 1991: Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam is overthrown by a coalition of rebel forces spearheaded by Meles Zenawi's Tigrayan People's Liberation Front and Issaias Afwerki's Eritrean People's Liberation Front. Meles becomes president of Ethiopia; Issaias becomes provincial leader of Eritrea.

April 23 -- 25, 1993: Eritreans vote overwhelmingly to break away fromEthiopia. Independence is granted on May 3 and takes effect on May 24.

November 1997: In the face of objections from Ethiopia, Eritrea adopts its own currency. Trade tensions result.

May 6, 1998: Fighting breaks out in the disputed border region around Badame. Bilateral talks and a U.S. -- Rwandan-brokered peace effort are unsuccessful. Full-scale warfare breaks out briefly the following month, but a truce is reached in late June.

Feb. 6: After weeks of rising tensions and mutual accusations, cross-border fighting resumes.

Eritrea's 'Mosquito' Plagues Ethiopia
By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Sunday, February 14, 1999; Page A29

MASSAWA, Eritrea, Feb. 13—In Ethiopia's capital, the inscrutable war it is waging with Eritrea is occasionally explained in a single sarcastic sentence:

"The mosquito is back."

That refers to the insect that bit Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki early in 1994, infecting him with malaria that almost killed him. It was a particularly

lethal cerebral strain and some in Ethiopia seriously propose that a lingering aftereffect provides the answer to the abiding question: Why are these two countries at war?

"My understanding is that this is a border dispute," Issaias said in an interview. Indeed, hundreds died last week in fighting on the frontier between the Horn of Africa neighbors that were friendly until recently. Thousands more wait in trenches on either side of the most intensely disputed sections of the 600-mile strip.

But what began last May as a skirmish over maps and exploded into war in June shows signs of becoming something more, Issaias said. Ethiopia maintains that its only priority remains land, but Issaias said Ethiopia is fighting because it would like to see a different government in the tiny country that until 1993 was an Ethiopian province. That claim was denied again today.

Issaias is "trying to mobilize the Eritrean people behind him, because the people of Eritrea are not happy about the border issue," said Yemane Kidane, a senior official in the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry. "We've made it crystal clear that we are concerned only with our sovereignty." Any change in government, Yemane added, "is the responsibility of the Eritrean people."

The Eritrean people seem disinclined to take up the gauntlet. "We believe in [Issaias] as a god," said Hassan Saleh, idling at a cafe in this port city while waiting for a boat to take him back down the Red Sea to Assab. Issaias "is the George Washington of Eritrea," said a diplomat stationed in Asmara, the Eritrean capital. "There is no challenge to this man. He is the one who most people consider [to have] brought them their freedom and sovereignty. He's responsible for the country, as far as they're concerned."

In an interview Friday night, Issaias, 53, who helped rebels win Eritrea's independence from Ethiopia in 1991, smiled at the mosquito joke but expressed dismay at the personalization of the conflict. Ethiopia, he said, "has changed its position from a border conflict to a campaign to topple the government of Eritrea." He said the "big plan" that has floated freely in the Ethiopian media has also been heard from Ethiopian junior officers captured in fighting early last week. Issaias said he interviewed the officers personally.

"It would be insane to think they could topple a government here," he said. "Do they believe this fairy tale? Is it an appeal to the Ethiopian population? Is it an appeal to the Eritrean population here and abroad?"

A third possibility is the world community. Eritrea came to the current conflict with a record of disputes with other neighbors; it currently is on civil terms only with Yemen, after nearly going to war over a border there, too. Moreover, to a diplomatic community that knows countries mostly by their leaders, Issaias, though smooth and articulate, has a reputation for brutal directness.

He told off the United Nations, which ignored the 30-year struggle for Eritrean independence, and made clear his disdain for the historically feckless Organization of African Unity. International aid organizations operating in Eritrea were informed that the country would be happy to accept their money but had no use for the foreign experts who usually come with it.

In private, Issaias can be even stronger. During months of efforts to find a peaceful way out of the border crisis, he met frequently with negotiators

shuttling between Asmara and Addis Ababa. Some walked away stunned. "He just says things and does things that are just way out there, on almost a daily basis," said a person involved in the negotiations, who asked not to be

named. "He enjoys being the contrarian. He loves seeing the reaction of people when he says something that's outrageous. "I think a lot of people think he's irrational and out of control, but I see it from his perspective."

That perspective is framed by the points laid out by Susan E. Rice, assistant secretary of state for African affairs, last spring. The framework, now embodied in an OAU resolution, calls for technical demarcation of the border -- but only after Eritrea pulls its troops out of the disputed regions where Issaias ordered them in May and where fierce fighting broke out today.

In short, the peace proposal picks up the current controversy at its international flash point, while ignoring earlier border incidents and provocations that Eritrean officials said prompted Issaias to military action.

But Issaias has shouldered no domestic blame for the border conflict, interviews in Eritrea's two largest cities suggest. In Asmara he is prized as a familiar if remote figure, glimpsed dining out with his wife or, less often, sharing a drink with other former fighters in the grass-roots liberation struggle that created a nation of striking social cohesion.

"There is no cult," said one longtime foreign resident, noting that, unlike many African nations, Eritrea is not awash in portraits of its president on its currency or in its places of business. "It's more that he is first among equals."

In Massawa to speak at a festival, he climbs out of a vehicle wearing sandals and a brown plaid shirt, acknowledges the crowd with one hand and scratches his nose with the other.

"He's a man of no protocol," said Hagos Ghebrehiwet, an associate of 25 years and a senior government official. The informality developed over decades in the mountains and bush with the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, which Issaias joined in 1966. He was its leader in 1991 when it finally defeated the

Ethiopian army led by dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam. By then the Eritrean insurgents had formed an alliance with another rebel army, led by Meles Zenawi, now the prime minister of Ethiopia and Issaias's enemy in the border fighting.

Issaias said the lessons of the liberation war -- when the vastly outgunned Eritreans defeated Africa's largest and best-equipped army -- were apparently lost on the Ethiopians. In the heavy fighting that broke out Feb. 6, he said Ethiopian forces relied on "a shopping list" of advanced military hardware, including T-62 tanks and late-model antitank missiles. Eritrean forces held their position, he said, a claim generally supported by diplomats here.

"It was a mistake to think any toy, any gadget you could buy on the market, can resolve any battle," Issaias said.

Asked why, in that case, Eritrea recently spent millions buying MiG-23 fighter jets, Issaias insisted the planes, which can reach the Ethiopian capital, are intended to deter air attacks on Eritrea. He vowed that Eritrea would not initiate an offensive but also offered a lesson.

"One thing I've learned in the last eight months," Issaias said, "is might makes right."

As War Ends, Peace Eludes Horn of Africa

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Monday, March 1, 1999; Page A16

NAIROBI, Feb. 28—Ethiopia declared "total victory" in its border war with Eritrea today, and Eritrea acknowledged losing most of the ground it has occupied since last summer. It was unclear, however, whether that rare point of agreement between the Horn of Africa neighbors moved them any closer to a peace settlement.

Ethiopian forces on Friday breached trenches Eritrean troops started digging last May, when its tanks rolled into dusty hills and plains that had been lightly populated until soldiers began arriving by the tens of thousands. At the climax of a four-day battle that each side said claimed thousands of enemy lives, Eritrean forces pulled back in what a spokesman called a "strategic retreat."

That retreat apparently left Ethiopia with the "Badme plain" -- the largest section of disputed territory on the 600-mile frontier the countries share. It also left Eritrea without grounds for continued objection to a settlement formulated by the Organization of African Unity.

On Saturday, while its troops were still scrambling for higher ground, Eritrea's ambassador to the United Nations announced his country's full acceptance of the OAU plan, which Ethiopia signed long ago. It was acknowledgment by Eritrea that its objections to the plan -- one over withdrawing from the disputed territory, the other over whether Ethiopia would return to administering it while experts decided the boundary -- had become moot.

"As we abandoned our front lines, the issue of Badme becomes somewhat irrelevant," said Yemane Ghebremeskel, an adviser to Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki.

The U.N. Security Council welcomed the Eritrean statement and called for an immediate cease-fire. So did President Clinton.

But Ethiopia had no immediate response. Government spokesman Selome Taddesse said senior Ethiopian officials would not reply before Monday. But she denied suggestions by Eritrean officials that the battlefield developments coincided with back-channel overtures from Ethiopia toward a cease-fire.

"They have been defeated big time on the Badme-Shiraro front, so we don't need any back door," Selome said.

The spokesman also denied that fighting continued today. Eritrea's Yemane said that Ethiopia initiated "fairly intense" fighting at 11 a.m., a claim broadly confirmed by a diplomat in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa who asked, "When did it ever stop?"

Eritrea was a province of the much larger country until 1993, when it voted to separate in a referendum that was the fruit of a 30-year liberation war. The separation left Ethiopia landlocked, and in the run-up to the latest fighting some called for reclaiming the former province.

"From the beginning there was this question, what was their real motive?" Yemane said. "We can judge from their actions."

The diplomat acknowledged "some sticky issues." In addition to retaking the disputed territory that Eritrea had occupied last May, Ethiopian forces moved into areas that are " clearly Eritrean territory," he said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The Rain Has Stopped, So Blood May Flow Again in the Horn of Africa

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Wednesday, November 3, 1999;Page A31

NAIROBI, Nov. 2—The rainy season has ended in the Horn of Africa, where Ethiopia and Eritrea are fighting for a dusty corner of remote terrain. Hardening ground has brought an increase in supply, ammunition and tank traffic. And in the trenches that line the disputed border, hundreds of thousands of troops wait for the human waves to start again.

"Everybody knows what is happening," said Yemane Ghebremeskel, a spokesman for the government of Eritrea. "There is a buildup of forces."

The rising tension in the obscure 18-month-old conflict has generated a fresh flurry of diplomatic activity aimed at preventing a resumption of all-out warfare. Last week, U.S. officials joined diplomats from the Organization of African Unity in visits to Addis Ababa and Asmara, the capitals of the rival nations.

Both Ethiopia, with a population of 60 million, and Eritrea, with one-twentieth that number, have accepted an OAU peace plan, but for reasons as unclear as the cause of the conflict the accord has not been implemented by either side.

Eritrea appeared to make a fresh overture Monday. Saying that his country would not be hung up on details, President Issaias Afwerki seemed to indicate in an interview with the Reuters news agency that Eritrea is prepared to pull back its troops unilaterally. A U.S. official called the remarks encouraging. "I think these guys have made a strategic decision to resolve this somehow peacefully," said the official, who asked not to be identified. The Issaias interview, the official said, was an effort "to see how the Ethiopians respond to flexibility--verbal flexibility."

The Ethiopian response came today. In a terse statement headlined, "Eritrea: All Talk, No Action," the government challenged Asmara to "move beyond talk and take practical actions that unequivocally demonstrate its commitment to withdraw." Eritrea replied that it would not, and the situation remains where it has been for 18 months--deadlocked in trenches along a 600-mile border.

and hundreds of troops died on both sides after Ethiopia marshaled its forces a month later. But the bloodiest battles came in February. In an offensive that military analysts described as World War I tactics backed by modern weapons, Ethiopia sent waves of infantry into the no man's land between the trench lines.

After four days of fighting, the Eritrean positions were overrun and Ethiopia reclaimed Badme Plain, the largest portion of the area under dispute. The death toll ran into the thousands, possibly tens of thousands, according to independent Western analysts.

Since then, death counts have become part of the dispute. Eritrea said Sunday that 70,000 Ethiopians have lost their lives on the battlefield. Today, Ethiopia called that figure "patently false" and claimed that Eritrean killed and wounded have topped 100,000.

"We've been waiting for the conflict to be settled peacefully," said Haile Kiros, a spokesman for the Ethiopian government. He pointed out that Ethiopia was first to accept the OAU peace plan and has objected only to a technical agreement that he said "diluted" the original.

"If the Eritreans do not accept it, we have no other alternative than to use all means available to recover our territory from the aggressor," Kiros said.

New York Times
March 1, 1999
Ethiopia Wins Border War Against Eritrea
By IAN FISHER

NAIROBI, Kenya -- Ethiopia declared "total victory" Sunday over Eritrea in their border conflict after a four-day offensive dislodged the Eritrean army from a craggy piece of borderland both sides conceded all along was not worth very much.

The brief but furious fighting may have cost thousands of lives, and it was too early to predict whether it was over for good. Indeed, Eritrea said that fighting continued Sunday morning in the Badme region, the central point of contention along the two nations' 600-mile border.

But Eritrea said it had no plans for a counteroffensive. On Saturday night, Eritrean officials agreed before the U.N. Security Council to accept the only peace plan on the table, which Ethiopia had already approved.

Ethiopia unleashed a fierce offensive on Tuesday that has been described as a World War I-style assault on Eritrean trenches. The Ethiopian government said Sunday that it had not decided whether to accept what seemed to amount to an Eritrean admission of defeat.

"We will take a position and we will make it public as soon as we do," said Selome Taddesse, an Ethiopian spokeswoman.

Among the many conflicts raging around Africa, the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been watched with particular worry by other nations because the

combatants are so heavily armed and well organized. Fighting had flared briefly last spring, and since then both nations have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on modern weaponry that is rare in Africa, including fighter planes and tanks.

As predicted, the casualties may be stunningly high. Eritrea said Sunday that it had killed 14,000 Ethiopians since fighting began again 22 days ago, more than 9,000 of them since Tuesday alone.

Ethiopia dismissed the number as "ridiculous," yet it said it had "captured, killed and wounded tens of thousands." It provided no details.

The front has been off-limits to foreigners, and there are no reliable estimates of casualties, though one U.S. official estimated 3,000 dead before Ethiopia began its offensive on Tuesday. Since then, Ethiopia has pounded Eritrean positions with bombs and artillery and finally launched a human assault on Eritrea's trenches.

Ethiopia's war with Eritrea, which was part of Ethiopia until six years ago, was long in coming but seemingly impossible to head off.

The leaders of the two proud nations were accustomed to war and had fought side by side for years against the former Ethiopian military government of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who was toppled in 1991.

Eritrea, which had been the northern region of Ethiopia, declared independence with Ethiopia's blessing in 1993, although its departure left Ethiopia without a port and thus landlocked.

But a series of disputes arose in 1997 concerning trade and Eritrea's introduction of its own currency over Ethiopia's objections. More broadly, Eritrea never seemed convinced that its independence had been accepted by Ethiopia. Many Eritreans believe Ethiopia has been fighting this war to re-annex the much smaller nation.

"There were indications that the final destination was Asmara," said the Eritrean government spokesman, Yermane Gebremeskel, referring to Eritrea's capital.

Ms. Taddesse, the Ethiopian spokeswoman, said it has no designs on Eritrean territory. "But," she said, "we have said repeatedly we will regain our sovereign territory."

Who owns exactly what has been confusing because the two nations never officially drew up their border. Last May, Eritrea said that it had rights to Badme, a sparsely populated and hilly region, and invaded it.

Eritrean soldiers appeared to have dug into positions in the high ground in Badme, and few experts predicted that Ethiopia would be able to dislodge them so quickly. But on Sunday Gebremeskel acknowledged that Eritrea had withdrawn completely after Ethiopian troops overwhelmed their positions in fighting on Friday.

"They were coming in waves," he said. "We had a good defensive position but when they pushed through we withdrew. In real terms we have not suffered in terms of human casualties or lost hardware, but we have lost space."

If the fighting is in fact over, focus now will turn to the peace proposal, drafted last year by the Organization of African Unity. The plan calls for a cease-fire and for both armies to withdraw while an international team settles the boundary issue. Eritrea had previously objected to restoring Ethiopian civil administration in the region, preferring instead to rely on a team of international monitors.

Gebremeskel said, however, that Eritrea decided to accept the plan once it was ousted from Badme.

"Now that we are not in Badme anymore it doesn't make much sense to talk about who will be administering it," he said.

March 29, 1999
New York Times
Casualty Claims Mount in Ethiopian Border War
By REUTERS

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia -- Ethiopia said Sunday that it had killed, wounded or captured more than 45,000 Eritrean troops and destroyed 77 tanks in border battles since Feb. 23.

Ethiopia gave no figures for its own losses in its assessment of Eritrean casualties in the latest fighting between the two countries. Eritrea has said that its forces killed thousands of Ethiopians in the disputed Badme region earlier this month but it has given no figures for its own losses.

There was no independent confirmation of the Ethiopian claims. Both sides in the war have been asserting that they have inflicted enormous casualties, and many outside observers believe the number of dead is high. But no outsiders have been permitted to see enough of the front to get an accurate picture of the fighting or an idea of the casualties.

In its statement Sunday, the Ethiopean Government said the Eritreans had been forced to move "from other fronts in a desperate bid to try and regain Badme." It added that its troops had captured "hundreds of mortars, antiaircraft and antitank weapons" and that "two MIG-29 planes were downed" in a series of battles fought between Feb. 23 and March 26." Eritrea had been driven out of Badme in a three-day battle between Feb. 23 and 26.

The conflict broke out last May and erupted again in February after an uneasy eight-month lull. Last year, Ethiopia accepted a proposal from the Organization of African Unity that calls on Eritrea to withdraw its troops from occupied Ethiopian territory along the border.

Eritrea says it accepts the plan and has called for an immediate cease-fire, but Ethiopia says Eritrea must first withdraw its forces from all occupied territory.

The war between Ethiopia and its former Red Sea province -- which became a fully recognized nation in May 1993 after gaining de facto independence two years earlier -- erupted after growing friction between the two countries, whose rebel armies had been allied to oust Addis Ababa's dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, in May 1991.

Peace Deal May Be Near for Ethiopia and Eritrea
Mon, 23 Aug 1999
New York Times

THE BADME PLAIN, Eritrea -- He is a carpenter who became a sniper but who isnow very tired of shooting people in this largely overlooked war, deadlier by far than Kosovo.

"Personally," said Feshtsion Tesfaldet, his finger on the trigger and his body tucked in a sandy trench here, "I don't want to see anyone else get killed."

Rifle fire still rings out and mortar rounds still drop down, but after 15 months of a particularly senseless conflict, the killing may in fact stop soon along the disputed border of Eritrea and its larger neighbor, Ethiopia. Eritrea has accepted all points of a peace plan. Ethiopia is asking questions about only a few details.

Nothing is certain, but President Clinton said last Monday that, "believe it or not," a deal seems near between the two allies of the United States on the Horn of Africa. He then mentioned the war's most ghastly aspect: 70,000 soldiers had died, he said, though his estimate was higher than most so far.

Before the war began in May 1998, few countries held as much promise as Ethiopia and Eritrea, both poor but industrious and growing economically. And so the war -- fought in trenches with sickening numbers of casualties -- has been a depressing rebuke to so many hopes for Africa.

The nations' allies watched in horror as Ethiopia and Eritrea turned their strengths against each other. They bought millions of dollars of warplanes and tanks and dug trenches. Ethiopia apparently spent thousands of young lives in human-wave assaults on Eritrea's positions, and bodies still lie in plain view, rotting in the rain.

The carnage has been great, and the distrust remains high between the two nations, once so close that the war felt like a domestic spat come to blows. That has made peace hard to find, even now when the disagreements have dwindled to a relatively few technicalities.

"We have never been so close to a peace agreement as now," said one Western diplomat in Eritrea. "Which doesn't mean we will have peace in the next few hours."

Neither nation will discuss the details that divide them. But they agree on much of a plan drafted by the Organization for African Unity and pushed by the United States and the United Nations. The plan calls for a cease-fire; for both sides to withdraw from disputed territory along their 625-mile border; and for outside observers, possibly United Nations peacekeepers, to monitor the accord.

Meanwhile, the United Nations will finally do what did not happen when Eritrea became independent from Ethiopia in 1993: demarcate the border, based on old maps drawn up by Eritrea's colonizer, Italy. The question is especially tricky here along the Badme plain, where the war began and which both sides claim as their own.

In May 1998, after a series of border incidents, Eritrean soldiers marched into the town of Badme, wresting it from the Ethiopian administration. Ethiopia declared war. On the surface, the battles were over Badme, but they were fueled by long tensions over trade and how to live in the same region as equals.

In the peace plan, diplomats say each side wins something. But many Eritreans say Ethiopia comes out on top because Eritrea must withdraw first from the parts of Badme it still holds, a tacit admission that it was first to use the might of its military to settle a border question. Ethiopia can also administer areas it once held while the borders are drawn up.

"It's the most suitable compromise, especially for Ethiopia," said one Eritrean soldier, Girmay Ogbu, 35, here at the front. "If they don't sign this, the world will realize that Ethiopia doesn't want peace."

Still Ethiopia has not signed off on the plan. Selome Taddesse, a spokeswoman for Ethiopia, noted that her nation had accepted the bulk of the plan last year, when Eritrea had not. She said Ethiopia was "100 percent committed" to the plan but had questions that must be answered by the Organization for African Unity. "Our questions are very specific," she said. "Our opinion is, the more we are specific, the more there is a guarantee for peace."

Diplomats say two major issues concern whether Ethiopian authorities may carry guns when their administration returns to Badme while the border is being drawn, and what power the outside observers will have to act on complaints by Eritreans living, at least temporarily, under Ethiopian control.

Many people in Eritrea, a proud nation of fighters, believe, though, that Ethiopia's objections mask an intention to reignite the fighting once the rainy season ends in September.

For 30 years, Eritreans battled against Ethiopia to win independence. They beat the former dictator, Mengistu Haile Mariam, in 1991 alongside a group of Ethiopian rebels who are who now in power in Addis Ababa.

But Eritrea's departure left Ethiopia landlocked, and there is still is some sentiment in Ethiopia that Eritrea should not have been allowed its independence. Eritreans believe that Ethiopia may want to either reclaim Eritrea or replace its current Government, led by President Isaias Afwerki , with one friendlier to Ethiopia.

"What's wrong with Ethiopia is they think they can easily disintegrate Eritrea," said Mehretu Ghebretensae, an Eritrean journalist and former fighter. "They think that by changing the Government they can recolonize Eritrea. That's impossible. Eritrea is in the blood of every Eritrean."

Ethiopia denies that it wants either to take territory or to topple Afwerki. The goal, officials there say, is to prove that Eritrea cannot use force to settle political problems, such as who owns Badme.

Along the front here -- where soldiers still skirmish at night from trenches only 50 or so yards apart -- the Eritreans say they are skeptical that Ethiopia really wants peace. Some say Ethiopia will not stop until it captures Asmara, Eritrea's capital.

As gunfire blasted between the trenches, Capt. Gebrehiwet Abebe, 39, said Ethiopia's leaders fear peace because that means they will have to explain to the people the enormous number of soldiers killed.

Neither side will release figures, but many analysts here and in Ethiopia estimate that at least 40,000 people have died in the war -- and most believe that Ethiopia suffered by far the higher casualties because it was largely on the offensive. One diplomat here estimated that Ethiopia had lost three soldiers for every Eritrean who died.

"They don't want to answer that question," Captain Abebe said. "That's why they don't want peace. But with pressure from the outside world, it's possible."

But Eritrea's leaders may too have to answer to their people once the war is over. Its losses on the battlefield may not be as high, but many Eritreans have died fighting for a piece of land that may, in fact, end up belonging to Ethiopia.

That could mean trouble for Afwerki. And it is a possibility many soldiers here, who have watched friends die for Badme, do not lke to contemplate.

"We know it's our land," Captain Abebe said tightly. "Don't ask that question."

The Rain Has Stopped, So Blood May Flow Again in the Horn of Africa

By Karl Vick
Washington Post
Wednesday, November 3, 1999;Page A31

"Everybody knows what is happening," said Yemane Ghebremeskel, a spokesman for the government of Eritrea. "There is a buildup of forces."

At stake in the stalemate--besides pride--is a patch of about 160 square miles claimed by both countries, which two years ago were close allies. The first skirmishes flared after Eritrea sent tanks into the disputed area in May 1998, and hundreds of troops died on both sides after Ethiopia marshaled its forces a month later. But the bloodiest battles came in February. In an offensive that military analysts described as World War I tactics backed by modern weapons, Ethiopia sent waves of infantry into the no man's land between the trench lines.

"If the Eritreans do not accept it, we have no other alternative than to use all means available to recover our territory from the aggressor," Kiros said.

Fighting, Famine Compete in Ethiopia
Washington Post
April 18, 2000

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia As months passed without rain and the earth turned to rock, the government of Ethiopia did two things. To the West, it issued increasingly insistent demands for food for its hungry people. At home, it dispatched another 100,000 troops to the rocky trenches facing a disputed border with Eritrea.

And now, as the alarm sounds around the globe for emergency relief, one of the world's poorest countries is being called to account for spending as much as a half-billion dollars fighting its neighbor while much of its own population slipped ever closer to mass starvation.

"In Ethiopia, we do not wait to have a full tummy to protect our sovereignty," a defiant Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told reporters here last week when asked if his government was putting war before the needs of the 8 million Ethiopians the United Nations says are threatened with famine. "We resist the link between the drought and the conflict."

The issue grates on Meles' government because it came to power by defeating a dictatorship that did little more than shrug while as many as 1 million Ethiopians perished in a famine in 1984-85. Under the new government, food security has been a watchword. It established a Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Commission and an early warning system for food crises. A permanent reserve of 400,000 tons of grain was set up, along with the logistical capacity to move it anywhere in the country within days.

In the current crisis, even in the face of reports from southeastern Ethiopia of hundreds of deaths--mostly of children--relief workers and diplomats blame any delays in the arrival of food aid on international donors. The Ethiopian government's readiness and cooperation, they say, has likely saved tens of thousands of people.

"It's been a real contrast between '84 and this time," said a Western diplomat who was stationed in Ethiopia back then.

Yet the goodwill is being severely tested by Ethiopia's insistence on prosecuting its war with Eritrea. The border clash between the former allies erupted in May 1998 when Eritrea sent tanks to occupy a barren stretch of disputed frontier territory. As diplomacy failed, both sides dug in, remilitarized and commenced a series of deadly battles that military experts say constitutes the most lethal war now being waged on the planet, with casualties in the tens of thousands.

"If you look at the recent history, African countries have an awful capacity to pursue wars while people are going hungry," said John O'Shea, director of the Irish aid agency GOAL, articulating a view widely held among those flocking to provide aid. "There's a big onus on the Ethiopian government to show that it cares passionately about the lives of its people."

Aid officials' biggest complaint is that Ethiopia is increasing spending on its war with Eritrea while its people go hungry. The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based research organization, estimates that Ethiopia spent $467 million on defense last year, up from $140 million before the war. The difference, aid officials estimate, might well cover the cost of famine relief.

Military analysts calculate that roughly half the war budget covers food and salaries for the troops deployed along the 600-mile front. The balance has gone into the pockets of arms dealers peddling the excess inventories of the former Soviet bloc: scores of T-55 tanks from Bulgaria and Belarus; Mi-24 helicopter gunships from Russia; and antitank missiles and Su-27 fighter jets.

An assortment of that hardware ended up burned and abandoned on a battlefield where thousands of soldiers died in March 1999, when Ethiopia tried to extend an earlier victory to another front. Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki has claimed that the fighting has taken 70,000 lives on both sides. Other observers have put the figure generally at "tens of thousands," while a Western military analyst who a year ago estimated 10,000 casualties said last week that the number may be three times that high.

Few believe the fighting is over. In the 13 months since the last major battle, Ethiopia has sent fresh recruits to the front and bought Russian-built Su-25 ground-attack jets. Analysts say the relatively slow-moving, heavily armed aircraft--comparable to the U.S. A-10 "Warthog"--presage another offensive, one they say is likely to come before seasonal June rains turn the front to mud.

"The Su-25s are the ones that have been doing the legwork in Chechnya," said Digby Waller, defense economist at the Strategic Studies institute in London. He said Ethiopia should have paid Russia about $20 million apiece for four planes, but another analyst cautioned that payment could be negotiated in a variety of ways, including a promise of future sales of coffee, Ethiopia's main source of hard currency.

The conflict has confounded Western nations that had been eager to help Ethiopia make the transition from a command to a market economy. And as a battery of outside peace initiatives came to naught, donors began suspending long-term aid, including development programs aimed at securing Ethiopia's food supply.

That coolness toward the Addis Ababa government was widely cited as a reason the European Union fell behind on its pledges to provide food aid earlier this year. EU delegation chief Karl Harbo denied that assertion, but added that the wheat and sorghum now being rushed into the country could encourage the government to divert its resources to the war.

"Food, like money, has fungibility," Harbo observed. "Every time we put in one ton of food, they can release another ton of their own resources [for their military]. Any assistance you give to a country in conflict you can say is a contribution to the conflict."

Further sharpening the debate is Ethiopia's refusal to accept food aid routed through Eritrea, as its enemy has offered. Before the war, 85 percent of Ethiopia's imports came through its neighbor's Red Sea ports. Finding alternative conduits for emergency relief "has been a logistical nightmare," said Judith Lewis, who runs the U.N. World Food Program office in Ethiopia.

Ethiopian officials reply that alternate routes have proved adequate, while they fume at the favorable publicity Eritrea has garnered by extending the offer. During the 1984 famine, the Eritreans blocked relief convoys to Ethiopia, forcing 100,000 people from the northern part of the country to migrate to Sudan for food aid. Now Eritrea faces food shortages of its own, while spending millions to arm troops in the trenches.

A diplomat in Addis Ababa attributed the difference in attention to tradition. "It's part of Ethiopia's national character for 2,000 years," the diplomat said: "Wars and famine."

Ethiopia Claims Major Victories Against Eritrea
Washington Post
May 14, 2000

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, May 14 Ethiopia claimed major victories today in its renewed border war with Eritrea, saying it had destroyed eight Eritrean divisions since fighting resumed Friday.

Eritrea, while not disputing the gains, said Ethiopia was paying dearly for its success, with 25,000 soldiers killed or wounded in two days of intense fighting.

Ethiopian officials said they had destroyed the Eritrean divisions in their trenches between the Tekeze and Mereb rivers and had inflicted "heavy losses on the enemy by destroying Eritrean troops that have been fleeing."

Acknowledging a retreat of sorts, Eritrean government spokesman Yemane Ghebremeskel said: "Our focus is to preserve the army; it's not to hold territory in a temporary way. The whole strategy is to minimize our losses."

The renewed fighting comes after a lull of more than a year in what has been an extremely bloody war; deaths from earlier battles are widely believed to have reached the tens of thousands. The two sides began the latest confrontation with an estimated 600,000 troops dug in along the 600-mile border, heavily armed with weapons bought as both countries have been sliding toward famine.

Ethiopian officials were exultant today over the result along the western front, a plain in the Badame area its troops had mostly reclaimed despite taking heavy losses more than a year ago. "It's the most brilliant operation," said Yemane Kidane, a senior official in the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry. "Taking eight divisions in two days--has it ever been done before? The western front is finished."

Neither side gave any sign of succumbing to international pressure to stop the fighting. On Friday, the U.N. Security Council gave the former allies 72 hours to lay down their arms or face unspecified sanctions, and it is scheduled to convene again Monday to discuss the conflict. Britain and the United States want to impose an arms embargo on the two countries.

Eritrea, a former province of Ethiopia, became Africa's newest nation in 1993 after fighting a 30-year war for independence under the slogan "Never Kneel Down" and prevailing over a Marxist dictatorship with a million-man army.

En route to victory, the Eritreans fought alongside a rebel army from the Ethiopian province of Tigray, a group that forms the government ruling Ethiopia today. The two governments, in fact, were uncommonly close for most of the 1990s. But long-simmering rivalries exploded in May 1998 when Eritrea moved tanks into the remote, lightly populated Badame area, where the border never was clearly drawn after Eritrea gained independence.

Tonight, the Ethiopian government released a list of "strategic positions" it claimed to have taken in the area: Tekombia, Mulki, Adihakim, Gosma, Tole, Upper and Lower Maikokah. Government spokesperson Selome Taddesse said the victories were the result of a combined land-air assault.

According to Western military experts, Ethiopia controlled the skies during last year's fighting. Since then, it has purchased several Russian-made ground-support combat jets at an estimated cost of $20 million each.

The BBC reported that Eritrean military sources acknowledged that Ethiopian forces had taken important positions on the Eritrean supply line running between the western and central fronts. An Eritrean spokesman declined to address the report, calling the situation "fluid."

If fighting moves to the central front, it could grow still bloodier, analysts said. Eritrea holds the Ethiopian border town of Zalambessa and much of the ground above it. Ethiopia's prolonged but unsuccessful assault on the stronghold a year ago left behind a no man's land littered with corpses and ruined armored vehicles. Ethiopian officials claimed Eritrea had staged that scene as propaganda.

Eritrea Agrees to Cease-Fire
Washington Post
May 24, 2000

Under intense attack, Eritrea said last night it had accepted an Organization of African Unity call for a cease-fire in its war with Ethiopia and was immediately redeploying its troops to positions held before the first round of fighting broke out on May 6, 1998.

Eritrea's ambassador to the United Nations, Haile Menkerios, said in an interview that at midnight local time, Eritrea had begun moving its troops from the disputed Zalambessa area, where U.S. government analysts said they had come under heavy pressure from Ethiopian forces. Earlier this month the Ethiopian troops had broken through the western front and were trying to encircle the Eritreans.

There was no word last night about whether Ethiopia had accepted the OAU proposal. The OAU chairman, Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika, flew to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, yesterday to press for a halt to the fighting. He also was expected to travel to Asmara, the Eritrean capital.

"We have called on the OAU and the international community to use everything in their power to pressurize Ethiopia to accept this request of the OAU and that it complies with all the stipulations of the OAU proposal," Menkerios said. "Should it not stop and if it decides to continue fighting even after Eritrea is in the process of redeploying its troops, then the international community should condemn Ethiopia and take immediate punitive action against it to stop its war of aggression against Eritrea."

Under the OAU proposal, a cease-fire would go into effect and both sides would immediately withdraw from areas occupied in fighting in the past two years. Both countries also would agree to let an international commission demarcate the border. Until now, however, Eritrea has refused to agree to interim arrangements for the disputed areas without a cease-fire first, and Ethiopia has refused to agree to a cease-fire without Eritrea first consenting to interim arrangements.

Tens of thousands of Eritrean and Ethiopian soldiers are on the central Zalambessa front, and analysts have been saying that the battle there could decide the outcome of the war. The heavily fortified area is central to conflicting border claims, which led to fighting between the two nations and the death of tens of thousands of soldiers in 1998.

Earlier yesterday, the two sides gave different accounts of the latest fighting in the Zalambessa area. An Ethiopian government statement said that Eritrea's forces were "collapsing" and that "the Eritrean army sustained devastating human and material losses and is in serious peril."

But Eritrea's government said it had repulsed a huge Ethiopian attack and inflicted heavy losses on its enemy, a day after Eritrean President Issaias Afwerki had vowed to reverse a string of Ethiopian gains. Eritrea said it had downed two more of Ethiopia's MiG-23 fighter planes, after claiming it shot down three the day before.

In fighting that began again earlier this month, Ethiopia overran Eritrean trenches and forces on the western front last week and its army advanced deep into Eritrean territory. Hundreds of thousands of Eritrean civilians fled their homes, many of them crossing the border into Sudan as refugees.

Western governments have been exasperated by the resumption of hostilities at a time when about 8 million Ethiopians and nearly 1 million Eritreans are threatened with famine.

Ethiopia and Eritrea Sign a Peace Accord

By Colum Lynch
The Washington Post
Monday , June 19, 2000 ; A10

UNITED NATIONS, June 18 –– Ethiopia and Eritrea pledged today to end a two-year-old war that has led to the deaths of tens of thousands of soldiers and civilians, and invited a U.N. peacekeeping force to monitor their disputed 600-mile desert border.

The foreign ministers of the two countries signed a peace accord brokered by the Organization of African Unity at a ceremony in Algiers, attended by representatives of the European Union and the United States, including former national security adviser Anthony Lake.

The war had involved some of the most high-tech military weaponry ever used in sub-Saharan Africa, straining the treasuries of the impoverished Horn of Africa neighbors at a time they are facing a deadly drought.

It had also been a source of deep frustration for the Clinton administration, which views the two countries as part of a regional strategic bulwark against the influence of neighboring Sudan. Lake has shuttled between the two countries for more than a year trying to end the conflict.

"This is a breakthrough which can and should end the tragic conflict in the Horn of Africa," Clinton said in a statement today. "It can and should permit these two countries to realize their potential in peace, instead of squandering it in war."

The 15-point accord followed an offensive last month by the Ethiopian military, which reclaimed disputed territory captured by Eritrea in May 1998 and advanced deep into the country. It calls on the two countries to cease hostilities immediately and make way for a U.N. peacekeeping force in a 15-mile buffer zone inside Eritrea until U.N. cartographers can demarcate the border.

Under the terms of the pact--which are more favorable to Ethiopia--Eritrea must pull its forces from the buffer zone temporarily to make way for the United Nations. Ethiopian forces must begin withdrawing to prewar positions two weeks after the peacekeepers arrive.

"We are now certain after two years of senseless fighting that there can be no military solution to this conflict," said Eritrean Foreign Minister Haile Woldensae. His Ethiopian counterpart, Seyoum Mesfin, promised his government "will remain faithful and loyal to the full implementation of this agreement."

The agreement creates a major new undertaking for the United Nations at a time it is struggling to manage a rapidly growing peacekeeping effort. Only a year ago, there were fewer than 13,000 U.N. peacekeepers, police and monitors stationed around the globe.

Today, there are more than 35,000, active in 18 missions from Kosovo to East Timor. The United Nations is planning to send an additional 10,000 troops to Sierra Leone, southern Lebanon, Congo and the Horn of Africa. But it has received no assurances from the United States that it will pay its share of the new missions, and congressional Republicans say that Clinton administration will have to make do with the $500 million it appropriated for the 2000 U.N. peacekeeping budget.

U.N. military planners initially estimated they would need to send about 5,000 military observers to monitor the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea. But Richard C. Holbrooke, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and Lake have argued that 1,200 to 2,000 would be enough.

Lake said the U.N. deployment would be a temporary, first step leading to a more comprehensive peace agreement between the two countries.

"Ethiopia and Eritrea are America's friends," Clinton said. "If they are ready to take the next step, we and our partners in the international community will walk with them."

Ethiopia , Eritrea at Odds Over Border Ruling
Both Sides Claim International Commission's Support for Their Land Claims

Washington Post
Sunday, April 14, 2002; Page A21

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, April 13 -- Ethiopia and Eritrea were at odds within hours after receiving a ruling today by an international commission established to define a new border between the two Horn of Africa countries following a war that killed 80,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more.

The ruling was presented to Ethiopia and Eritrea at a closed meeting at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, but is not scheduled to be made public until Monday.

Ethiopia and Eritrea had pledged to respect the decision by the board of judges, treaty experts and international jurists. But today they argued over whose land claims had been vindicated.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin, speaking after the Ethiopian cabinet met and accepted the ruling, said he was certain that the new border backed his country's claims.

"This is a victory of peace over aggression and violence. It is a victory of law over the rule of the jungle," Seyoum said in a statement. "Eritrea lost the peace as well as the war. . . . Ethiopia accepts the ruling. Ethiopia is satisfied. We hope that the decision will once and for all seal any attempt by military adventurers to change the boundary by means of force."

He said territory awarded to Ethiopia included three key areas along the 620-mile border where the heaviest battles of the war were fought -- Badme, Zalambessa and Bure.

In the Eritrean capital, Asmara, state television said that the Ethiopian government was lying. "Whatever the Ethiopian government has announced [about the border ruling] is a lie," a state television announcer said, showing a map of the border.

"It's a victory for both peoples, especially for the Eritrean people," another announcer, crying with emotion, said in a mid-evening commentary.

Fighting erupted between the two countries in May 1998, when Eritrea invaded territory claimed by Ethiopia. Eritrea won independence from Ethiopia in 1993.

After months of heavy fighting in which up to 300,000 Eritreans fled their homes, Ethiopian troops captured much of the smaller country's prime agricultural land in a last offensive in May 2000. More than 70,000 refugees still live in makeshift camps.

Humiliated by the Ethiopian offensive, Eritrea, which has a population of just 4.3 million compared with Ethiopia's 65 million, agreed to a cessation of hostilities in June 2000.

A peace deal signed by the nations in December 2000 established the commission to mark the border, exchange prisoners, return displaced people and hear claims on compensation for war damages. Despite the cease-fire, relations between the countries remained strained, and the United Nations had to extend a mission of 4,200 peacekeepers deployed in a buffer zone to prevent a resurgence of violence.