Ethiopian troops with pack animals set off on a night march from Adigrat
on their way to confront Eritrean forces at the front near Tsorona ; Photograph: SAYYID AZIM / AP

Adigrat, northern Ethiopia - THOUSANDS of Ethiopian soldiers were heading north towards Eritrea yesterday, apparently in preparation for a new offensive in the border zone of western and central Tigre, where heavy fighting took place last week.

Some 500 troops, most on foot, others packed into lorries bedecked with Ethiopian and Tigrean flags, were resting on the roadside during the heat of the day yesterday. Officers refused to allow interviews or photographs to be taken, but a few told journalists they were heading for the front, but did not know exactly where.

A much larger force of about 5,000 men, all on foot, carrying grenade-launchers, machineguns and mortar shells, as well as shovels and stretchers, were heading for the border, a few miles north of the regional centre of Adigrat, just before midnight the previous night.

Some said they were marching towards the Badme front, about 100 miles to the northwest, where Ethiopia has been trying to retake about 180 square miles of disputed mountainous scrubland seized by Eritrea last May. The Eritreans have refused to withdraw from the territory, despite numerous appeals to do so from the Organisation of African Unity, the UN Security Council and other international bodies, to allow for arbitration and the conclusion of a bilateral border commission.

But many of the soldiers, some of whom had been marching for the past 16 hours, said they had no idea where they were being sent. "We are just told to keep going. It is not for us to know where we are going, but we are ready to fight anywhere to defend our country against the Eritrean aggressor," said one 22-year-old.

It seems likely that many of them were being sent to the much nearer front of Tsorona, where Eritrean and Ethiopian forces carried out intensive skirmishes later last week, as the fighting around Badme was dying down.

Neither side made any significant advances, while both claimed the other side had suffered heavy casualties.

At an Ethiopian observation post, on a high ridge surrounded by trenches, dugouts and piles of sandbags, an army major pointed out a hilltop 400 yards away from which he said the Eritreans had been driven back. They were now on the other side of the valley, some two miles away.

The Eritrean positions were impossible to make out in the broken terrain, which made any advance by either side extremely difficult, even with artillery there. Guns mounted at high points commanded a huge sweep of land, making troops advancing up the hillside vulnerable.

Behind the Ethiopian front line, marked by several artillery pieces dug into rocky emplacements along a ridge of high ground, hundreds of troops busied themselves around mounds of stores, camouflaged lorries and ammunition dumps, apparently preparing themselves for action. Two Russian-made self-propelled guns sat in a clearing, awaiting deployment in a strategic position. But for the time being all was quiet, only a single high column of dust some miles to the northwest betraying the detonation of an artillery shell. Soldiers said artillery exchanges were a daily occurrence, but that there has been no serious fighting since February 12.

On the Badme front, the atmosphere was entirely different, with very little to suggest that a battle had taken place there only ten days earlier. The Eritreans said they had beaten back an Ethiopian offensive there, leaving thousands of Ethiopians dead and wounded on the battlefield with hundreds more taken prisoner. Journalists taken to the front by the Eritreans saw dozens of dead Ethiopians and talked to many more who had been taken prisoner.

The Ethiopians responded late to the Eritrean propaganda offensive, finally taking journalists to the front this week. On the Badme front they showed reporters a four-mile stretch of terrain they said they had retaken from the Eritreans on the first day of hostilities on February 6.

But other than a few scorchmarks left by shells there was little evidence of fighting. The Ethiopians said they had buried all the dead on the battlefield and that all their prisoners had been removed from the front to an undisclosed location. The local commander, a colonel who refused to give his name, would not say how many troops had been involved in the fighting. Now only a few dozen soldiers were to be seen in the area, some patrolling, others strolling casually about in small groups.

You can leave a camera on your car seat with the window open for hours without fear of it being stolen. Shopkeepers invite you in for a cup of the best cappuccino on the continent without once trying to hustle a sale.

And the only beggar to be seen -- a young boy who says he wants to be a pilot when he grows up -- asks to be bought a text book from a nearby stationers than be given money.

It is difficult not to be seduced by Eritrea, but spend more than a week here and you begin to get the feeling that something is not quite right about the place, that there is something artificial about the country.

``I can't put my finger on it,'' said one foreign resident. ``I like living here but at the back of my mind I just don't understand the place and I never will.''

``It is a strange place,'' said another. ``There is something eerie about it. Everyone says they are happy, but you get the feeling that perhaps deep down they are not, that it is all a facade.''

The absence of any diversity of opinion, the lack of spontaneity and a zealous adherence to the government's official line suggests a society not allowed the freedom of thought, expression or liberty that its members were promised in their 30-year independence struggle.

NATION FORGED THROUGH STRUGGLE

Eritrea was internationally recognised as independent country only in 1993 after a referendum overwhelmingly backed separation from Ethiopia.

Eritreans resisted both Italian and British colonial rule, but the independence struggle began in earnest in the early 1960s, when Eritrea was made a province of Ethiopia.

With virtually no outside help, the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF) took on and defeated a succession of Ethiopian armies sent from Addis Ababa to crush them.

The Ethiopians had no shortage of foreign support. First the United States poured millions of dollars in arms and ammunition into the country in an attempt to curry favour with former Emperor Haile Selassie.

Then the Soviet Union pumped millions more and backed their aid with military advisors when Haile Mengistu Mariam seized power and installed his Marxist military Dergue government.

At various times the EPLF controlled vast swathes of the country -- including cities -- and scored punishing raids on Ethiopian garrisons from which it secured the weapons to carry out its struggle.

Addis Ababa countered ruthlessly -- not hesitating to bomb towns and cities which were infiltrated by the EPLF even if it meant killing Ethiopian soldiers holed up in their garrisons.

NATIONAL RECONSTRUCTION

All this time the EPLF went about turning the country into a modern Sparta. Tens of thousands of Eritreans were born, raised, educated and trained to fight while living in mobile communities that lived off the land.

Their society was a model of industriousness. Engineers, technicians, artisans and academics learnt their trades in the trenches and bunkers which were their homes.

That industriousness is still evident as the country grapples with trying to rebuild a nation which is among the poorest in the world.

Every Eritrean has to do 18 months of national service which includes six months of military training followed by a year spent building roads, dams, schools, hospitals and in other social service. There are few ``draft dodgers.''

And that same spirit is being exploited to the full as Eritrean troops face off against the Ethiopian army once again in a battle over border territory.

All media in the country is strictly state-controlled and the television and radio station play endless repeats of liberation music that had been almost forgotten in the years of peace since 1993.

The message is victory, but beneath the surface there is unease. Parents wonder if they will ever see their children again. News of casualties -- and there certainly have been some -- is not made public.

Dead soldiers are buried where they fall, without sentimentality, and those who disobey orders are reported to be ruthlessly dealt with.

Intro: with african leaders calling for an end to the war between Ethiopia and Eritrea, both sides appear determined to continue their fight. correspondent scott stearns is in Ethiopia and looks at some of the issues behind the conflict -- and the people caught in the middle.

Text: /// opens with prayer establish and fade under text ///

In a cool breeze just before dawn, hundreds of Ethiopian Christians move through the streets of Axum, wrapped from head to toe in white cotton. High priests carry a replica of the ark of the covenant under red and blue satin umbrellas trimmed with gold.

It is a centuries-old tradition made modern only by swinging kerosene lamps -- the start of nearly two-months of fasting for lent in one of Ethiopia's holiest cities. This year, there is a special series of prayers for an end to the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Thousands of civilians have been displaced by the fighting. farmer Yemane Gidey Sile Tsion says his family left their home with a only bag of clothes and a loaf of bread.

Mr. Yemane says there was heavy shelling and automatic weapons fire around their farm near the village of Ayay. he says he took his family to safety before returning to see what he could salvage from their home.

One-hundred kilometers east on the Tsorona front, many families are living in caves to protect themselves from Eritrean shelling. Abeba Gebreselassie says there is no where else to go.

Ms. Gebreselassie says there are about 60 women heading families in this cave near the village of Embadakayna. She says the men are out during the day, so women cook and collect drinking water from a spring two-kilometers away. Ms. Gebreselassie says -- it is not a good life here, but we have had to come to save the lives of our children.

African leaders trying to end this war are backing an Organization of African Unity plan to arbitrate the border dispute. Ethiopia has accepted that plan. Eritrea is yet to respond.

Eritrea wants international monitors in the disputed areas before withdrawing its forces. Ethiopia wants those troops out and local Ethiopian authority restored before formal peace talks.

Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin says the international community must put more pressure on Eritrea to accept the O-A-U plan and stop the fighting.

"Eritrea continues to prevaricate. It has tantamount rejected it. So we are calling on the international community, in the interest of peace, in the interest of resolving this crisis through peaceful means, to do what it can do to reverse the aggression committed by Eritrea against Ethiopia, to give peace a chance. "

Eritrea is unhappy with the o-a-u plan because it recognizes Ethiopian control over disputed areas before the start of fighting last May. That means Eritrea may have to give up control of areas including the town of Badame, until arbitrators decide what land belongs to who. For Eritrean president Isayas Afeworki, the issue of Badame is not open to question.

President Isayas says -- Badame is Eritrean and it has always been Eritrean. he says -- Italian colonialists decided that everyone in that area should be under the same authority, so they agreed that the people of Badame would be Eritrean.

President Isayas says he has no interest in taking anyone else's land, just reclaiming what is rightfully his. He says it is Ethiopia that has territorial ambitions, trying to reverse Eritrean independence in 1993 by slowly redrawing the border.

Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum says the ongoing counter- offensive is designed only to restore its borders, not to take land inside Eritrea.

" Our political and military objective is one, and only one -- to defend our sovereignty and territorial integrity, to regain our territory that Eritrea still continues to occupy by the use of force. "

Ethiopia says Eritrea is jealous of the pace of economic development in northern Tigray province. When Eritrea issued its own currency, Ethiopia refused to accept it, weakening the money's value because Ethiopia was the biggest market for Eritrea's ports of Masawa and Asab. Now Ethiopia gets everything through the port of Djibouti and Eritrea's import-export economy is suffering.

It is an unlikely war between what one western diplomat called two of the proudest and most stubborn people in Africa. With thousands of troops dug-in along their rocky border, it is difficult for African leaders to convince both sides to pursue peace without some shift in the balance of military power. (signed)

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The seemingly endless river of thousands of troops marched in single files, carrying rifles, ammunition, rocket propelled grenades or stretchers.

They had been walking all day, but there were no signs of weariness among the high-spirited troops who said they were fresh from a victorious battle against the Eritrean army.

"I'm not tired because we got a victory," said 22-year-old Fanton, refusing to drop his brisk pace as he spoke. "I wanted to defend my country and I am excited."

Fanton said he had volunteered for the army shortly after Eritrean forces invaded a disputed western border territory around the Ethiopian-administered town of Badme in the first round of the border war between the two nations last May.

Now his battalion and several others were making the days-long trek to the Badme front, having defeated Eritrean forces at Tsorona, Fanton said.

"I wasn't afraid but sometimes I had to kill people," he said, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the darkness. "It's good, I like it in the army."

His was one of the few direct testaments to the battlefield successes that Ethiopia says it has scored over its northern neighbour in the Horn of Africa.

Other evidence is hard to come by since journalists are often barred from the front lines. When the latest fighting first erupted, Ethiopia said it won a key victory at the Badme front, capturing an important Eritrean stronghold, but it was a further 10 days before journalists were allowed to the scene.

It was clear there had been fighting -- spent cartridges littered the Ethiopian trenches from where they said they had launched a victorious counter-offensive against Eritrean forces.

Beneath, the rolling plain was patched with circles of scorched blackened scrub where artillery shells had landed.

Ethiopia said it had encircled Eritrean troops in a pincer movement, driving them back in vicious hand-to-hand fighting and regaining some seven km (four miles) of Eritrean-held territory.

"When we advanced down the hill and saw the dead Eritreans, I felt very happy," said one Ethiopian soldier.

Driving down onto the plain in a camouflaged army vehicle, an Ethiopian commander warned the Eritrean army still held the high ground to the west and that the area was prey to shelling.

The bodies of countless Eritrean soldiers were removed long ago, he said, and prisoners of war taken to a secret location.

Asked for more concrete proof of the victory, the commander pointed to a pile of stale bread rolls behind a blue water tank.

"That is the Eritreans' bread," he said. "They get it in sacks. Our bread is like a biscuit, wrapped in plastic."

The evidence was hardly conclusive, and at the Tsorona front it was impossible to verify another commander's account from a mountaintop observation point of a fierce battle which he said left over 3,000 Eritrean soldiers killed or wounded.

Ethiopia has the backing of the international community in its demand that Eritrean troops withdraw from contested border territories, and says it has no need to gloat over its victories by presenting bloodied Eritrean bodies to the media.

On the Eritrean side of the border, television pictures show dead Ethiopian soldiers, lines of prisoners of war and an Ethiopian helicopter shot down at the southern Burre front -- all giving an impression of military supremacy.

"The Eritreans have got their propaganda machine on overdrive and it's working," a diplomat based in Addis Ababa said. "Ethiopia may be winning on the battlefield, but we've no way of knowing."