Ethiopia scored a major victory in its border war with Eritrea on Wednesday by seizing the strategic town of Barentu and taking full control of the western battle front.

Eritrea insists it made a strategic withdrawal, but Presidential advisor Yemane Gebremeskel admitted hundreds of thousands of people were now leaving the area.

``The town of Barentu was evacuated prior to the withdrawal of the army,'' he said. ``According to our relief organization ... over 200,000 people from the Barentu area are heading east.''

Barentu, about 70 km (45 miles) inside Eritrea, had served as a major command center and supply route for Eritrea's army on the western Badme front of the two-year-old border war.

Ethiopian forces launched a huge offensive last Friday and targeted Barentu in their drive to recapture territory they say has been occupied by Eritrea since May 1998, when a border dispute and trade policy differences exploded into war.

``Losing Barentu is losing the whole Western part of Eritrea,'' Ethiopian government spokesman Haile Kiros said.

He said the main objective was to secure the Barentu area and deploy troops and equipment eastwards to two other war fronts where Eritrean forces still occupy disputed territory.

``We will keep enough troops here to defend the area and others will move to liberate the rest of our occupied territory,'' he said.

The war has horrified Western governments who have pledged millions of dollars to help the two countries avert famine.

The United Nations Security Council on Wednesday imposed an arms embargo against the two countries for a year, but diplomats in the Kenyan capital of Nairobi said the weapons ban would have little effect.

``Both sides have spent the last two years beefing up their armies,'' one diplomat said. ``They have enough weapons to last for at least a year anyway..''

Another diplomat said the embargo would be hard to enforce and Eritrea, with its Red sea coastline, would find it easier to break the sanctions than landlocked Ethiopia.

Ethiopia insists it was a victim of Eritrean aggression at the start of the war and blames the failure of all peace initiatives on Eritrean intransigence and the U.N.'s refusal to take sides.

``This is the wrong embargo imposed against the victim. Treating the victim and the aggressor equally is unacceptable,'' Haile said.

Unofficial Transcript --

Yesterday the Ethiopians captured the strategic town of Barentu. So the odds are not looking good for the Eritreans. But as Alex Last reports from Asmara, the Eritrean army is determined to continue the fight none the less.

Alex Last: The Eritrean government announced on Wednesday that their forces had withdrawn from the Eritrean town of Barentu. Barentu is the capital of the Gash-Barka region of Eritrea, where most of the food is produced for the small country. Unconfirmed reports said that Ethiopian bombing raids on the town had left up to 40 civilians dead or wounded.

The loss of Barentu means that the last main supply road to the western army has been cut. It is possible to supply by a roundabout route but the road is difficult. The road from Barentu which runs east to the major town of Akurdat, and then on to Eritrea’s second city of Keren, is tarmacked and flat.

Unconfirmed reports say that total mobilizations have begun in Keren.

In short, if Ethiopian troops advance eastwards then western Eritrean towns will have to evacuate to Keren or Asmara.

Already an estimated 200,000 civilians are on the move, fleeing the Ethiopian advance in the west. The humanitarian crisis in Eritrea is only likely to get worse, while as some UN officials complain, millions of dollars are going to help the starving in Ethiopia.

In a bizarre contrast to the losses in the west decorative lights and flags have lit up the Eritrean capital Asmara. The ninth annual celebration of independence day from Ethiopia will be celebrated in less than a week.

(inaudible)…Is where can they hold off the Ethiopian advance. Possibly in Keren, where the Italians held the British for over six months during the second world war sixty years ago.

The Eritrean army says that heavy fighting is going on to the south of Barentu especially as the Eritreans try to outmaneuver the invading force which has more soldiers and firepower.

Still, the most important battle is yet to come, and that will be on the central front.

DATE=5/18/2000
TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT
TITLE=ETHIOPIA - ERITREA (L)
NUMBER=2-262509
BYLINE=SCOTT STEARNS
DATELINE=ETHIOPIAN-OCCUPIED ERITREA
CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO:  Ethiopia says it has captured the strategic 
Eritrean town of Barentu, cutting a main Eritrean re-
supply route.  V-O-A s Correspondent Scott Stearns 
reports from Ethiopian-occupied Eritrea.  

TEXT:  After days of heavy shelling, Ethiopia says 
Barentu has fallen, as Eritrean troops there retreat 
north toward the town of Keren.  That is because 
Ethiopia says it has cut the main road east to the 
capital, Asmara, now making it considerably more 
difficult for Eritrea to supply its western army.

Ethiopia says it will pursue those retreating troops, 
much like it did with Eritreans who withdrew from the 
town of Om Hajar near Sudan when Ethiopian air force 
jets blasted the Eritrean convoy on the road.

Whatever the next step, it is clear Ethiopia is 
continuing its drive into western Eritrea.  That drive 
has now captured nearly one-hundred kilometers of 
territory in less than one week.  

Ethiopia has established staging areas and field 
hospitals across western Eritrea.  With tanks and 
heavy artillery continuing to roll toward the front, 
the war shows  no  sign of letting up.

Ethiopia may now use Barentu as a base from which to 
expand its offensive east and west, parallel to their 
contested border (with Eritrea).

There has been heavy shelling along the central 
Tsorona front, but so far  no  major fighting by 
ground troops -- neither the expected Ethiopian 
attempts to retake the town of Zalambesa nor a 
possible Eritrean counter-attack.

With Barentu as a base, Ethiopia might move on the 
central front from the rear, trapping Eritrea's army 
or pushing them farther east toward the town of 
Mendefera, 50 kilometers from Asmara.

Ethiopia, therefore, says it has already hit military 
sites around Mendefera.  Jets kept up their bombing 
runs into Eritrea  (Thursday), with Sukoy-27's flying 
patrols along the border.  (Signed)

NEB/SKS/JWH/PLM



18-May-2000 06:29 AM EDT (18-May-2000 1029 UTC)
NNNN

Source: Voice of America
.

For the two years of the war, the fighting has been confined largely to a sophisticated network of trenches along the nations' border. But five days after Ethiopia mounted an offensive, the trenches are empty and the war has shifted firmly into Eritrean territory. Barentu is about 40 miles from the Ethiopian border, and about 18 miles from this market village to the south.

This afternoon Ethiopian jets streaked toward Barentu, and smoke from the area could be seen from here.

Ethiopia said its army was four miles south of the town -- one of two major supply routes to the westernmost front of the war -- and advancing in heavy fighting.

Eritrean officials said their soldiers had repulsed several assaults on Barentu but said the Ethiopians' gains -- which have emptied several Eritrean towns in the path of advancing troops -- confirmed the worst: Eritrea, until 1993 the northernmost province of Ethiopia, has always maintained that Ethiopia had its eye on permanently taking territory.

The war started in May 1998 as a dispute over contested spots along the nations' 620-mile border.

"Ethiopia says it wants to regain contested territory, but then why do they keep trying to gain territory beyond the contested territory according to the colonial maps?" Yemane Ghebremeskel, an aide to Eritrea's president, said to the French news agency today in the capital, Asmara.

But Haile Kiros, an Ethiopian government spokesman, said the nation's interest was purely in retaking land that it said Eritrea invaded in 1998.

"Our intention is only to regain our territory," he said. "The invading forces have to be pushed out."

After nearly a year of calm along the border, Ethiopia started an offensive on Friday, saying it wanted a quick end to a war that has drained its economy and complicated a food shortage that has affected millions of people. While Eritrea has condemned Ethiopia for reigniting the fighting and for reluctance in signing a peace accord, Ethiopia has said Eritrea was the original aggressor and needed to be punished.

In the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, government officials said its soldiers had shot down an Eritrean MIG fighter jet after it had bombed recaptured territory on Tuesday.

Ethiopian troops poured through this town on the way north to Barentu.

As they did, dozens of other Ethiopian troops looted the town, whose residents fled during the fighting on Saturday. Ethiopian soldiers picked through the mud-and-thatch houses and emptied shops in the main square. One soldier carried an umbrella and a soccer ball; another carried two new axes and a bottle of vegetable oil. Abdu Seid, a 22-year-old company commander, said that despite appearances, no one was really looting. The soldiers were dirty after all the fighting, he said, and looking for things they could bathe with.

"We need to wash ourselves," he said. "People have taken only what they need," he said