07:18 a.m. Jul 12, 1998 Eastern
ADDIS ABABA, July 12 (Reuters) - A second group of a thousand Eritreans, who Ethiopia says are a threat to state security, left Addis Ababa on Sunday under escort for their homeland.
Some 1,045 Eritreans, including members of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front (EPLF), the governing party in Eritrea, were deported last month. Some of them were accused of spying and fund raising for Eritrea.
Eritrea, for its part, has deported 4,400 Ethiopians since the outbreak of conflict between the two Horn of Africa nations in May, according to Ethiopian officials.
The latest deportees left a marshalling area in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, in a convoy of packed buses. They are expected to reach a border checkpoint on Tuesday, one government official said.
Members of the deportees' families and reporters were allowed to witness the departure.
Witnesses said some of the deportees were accompanied by their families. In other cases they left their wives and children behind.
Government spokeswoman Selome Taddesse said those being deported were members of the EPLF and they had been engaged in subversion.
``They were involved in gathering and dispatching information, disseminating war propaganda and raising funds for Eritrea's war effort against Ethiopia,'' Selome told reporters.
She said the Eritreans, who were rounded up from different districts of the capital, could be visited by Red Cross officials.
She showed reporters a diagram of what she said was an EPLF ``underground structural network'' covering Ethiopia.
Ethiopia and Eritrea are locked in a bitter border conflict in which hundreds of people have been killed. Fighting died down last month but both countries maintain a strong military presence in border areas.
In the Red Sea port of Djibouti, which borders on both countries, an Ethiopian Embassy official told reporters on Saturday that some 30,000 Ethiopians were being held hostage in the Eritrean port of Assab.
``They have been dismissed from their jobs but the Eritreans will not let them leave,'' he said. He also alleged that Eritrea had confiscated in Assab 125,000 tonnes of cargo destined for Ethiopia.
Asked to comment, Eritrean ambassador to Djibouti Daniel Yohannes said the Ethiopians were free to leave Assab.