November 11, 1998

Dear Netters:

Although the intransigence of the Eritrean government is clear to the diplomatic community, the Eritreans have mounted an incredibly successful public relations effort to portray their position in a favorable light. Recently the following phrase has come to be incorporated in all the main news reports about the conflict.

"Ethiopia supports a peace plan brokered by the United States and Rwanda, and endorsed by the OAU, which calls on Eritrea to withdraw from contested border territories to positions held before May 6 when the conflict erupted. "

"Eritrea says it wants a neutral monitoring force put in place first."

This phrase FALSELY suggests that the only thing preventing peace is Eritrea's desire to have a neutral monitoring force in place prior to a military withdrawal. In fact, the Eritrean's are objecting to the return of the pre-existing Ethiopian CIVIL administration. They object to this whether a neutral force is there or not. The OAU plan ALREADY calls for a nuetral force to be stationed in the disputed territories.

The above phrase also FALSELY indicates that there are no other outstanding issues of major contention. In fact, Eritrea has never specifically endorsed the Italo-Ethiopian treaties of 1902-1908 as the basis for final delimitation and demarcation. As I have explained repeatedly using colonial-era maps from 1903 to 1935, the Treaties do not provide Eritrea an opportunity to claim Badime. To claim Badime they need to force Ethiopia to accept the illegal, expansionist Italian maps which violated the Italo-Ethiopian treaties. THIS IS THE MAJOR REASON WHY ERITREA WON'T ACCEPT THE PEACE PLANS.

Of course they would never admit this in public. They would lose significant support in the Eritrean diaspora if they announced publicly that they rejected the Italo-Ethiopian treaties, and were bent on illegally expanding Eritrea to fulfill the illegal, Fascist-era, Italian expansionism. The support of the Eritrean diaspora is absolutely essential to sustain the Eritrean war effort.

Lack of Effective Ethiopian Public Relations

Why is this mischaracterization allowed to go on? Why have the Ethiopian diplomatic missions not sent strong protests to news agencies that are using this phrase?

Individual Ethiopians can do their part, but an active and vigilant official Ethiopian effort is needed. Only direct communication from official Ethiopian sources is going to reverse the Eritrean public relations offensive. The Eritreans have succeeded in getting the above language incorporated into newswires from the AP and Reuters. How much longer is the Ethiopian government going to tolerate this?

Excuses and Diversions

One of the things that is really striking about the Eritrean government's method of operations, is the way they lash out at innocent third parties in order to create diversions and derail the peace process.

Eritrea knows that the only logical peace agreement is going to involve an Eritrean military withdrawal and the return of the Ethiopian civilian administration. In addition, final border delimitation and demarcation is going to be based on the Italo-Ethiopian treaties. Unilateral Italian maps that violate the treaties are not going to form the basis for resolving the border issues.

Eritrea is fully aware that any peace process is going to lead inevitably to the points outlined above. That is why they have decided on a military solution. They are completely confident of their ability to manipulate apparent political divisions in Ethiopia to reduce the operational capacity of the Ethiopian army. They are absolutely confident of being able to destroy the Ethiopian army and dictate a settlement to the crisis according to their terms.

This is why they have attacked all the mediators beginning with Rwanda, then the United States and now Djibouti. The President of Eritrea even stated publicly that the US encouraged Ethiopia to bomb the Asmara military airbase!

The other step the Eritreans have taken is to intensify shelling and blame it on Ethiopia. They hope to use the artillery exchanges as an excuse to delay or derail the peace process.

-Dagmawi