Reuters
Tuesday June 23, 12:37 PM
(Adds quotes, background) By Matthew Bigg
ADDIS ABABA, June 23 (Reuters) - Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Tuesday his government would teach Eritrea a lesson if it failed to withdraw from Ethiopian territory.
Meles told Reuters he was prepared to "go the extra mile" for mediation in the conflict between the Horn of Africa neighbours, but he said the Ethiopian government was also preparing for war.
"What we will try to do if they don't withdraw is to ensure their invading army is removed from our territory and make sure a lesson will have been learned," Meles said.
Meles stressed Ethiopia had no territorial claims on Eritrea and no intention of interfering domestically with the government of Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki.
"Our target is to reverse the invasion...The political objective is to make sure the invasion does not take place again," he said in an interview.
In an apparent attempt to seize the moral high ground, Meles said Ethiopia would make an extra effort for mediation and would refrain from bombing civilian targets or seizing Eritrean territory in case of war.
"We have no intention of occupying any piece of real estate in Eritrea," he said.
The two allies have been at loggerheads since May 6 when a border dispute degenerated into clashes in which hundreds have been killed.
There have been no reports for nearly two weeks of significant fighting on the original front at Badme, at Zalambessa or on a third front south of the Eritrean port of Assab.
An attempt by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) to mediate on the basis of a plan sponsored by the United States and Rwanda broke down last week when Eritrea rejected a proposal that it withdraw to territory it held before May 6.
Meles, 43, spoke in hushed tones for almost an hour of questions, choosing his words with care and presenting Ethiopia as the injured party. Relations with Eritrea would not fully recover, Meles said, but he held out the possibility for an improvement through mediation.
Meles and senior western analysts based in Addis Ababa say the initial attacks on May 6 and May 12 at Badme came from Eritrea. Eritrea argues it was reclaiming its own land.
Meles said he was at a loss to find a deeper reason for the sudden upsurge of tension and said he considered it "a stab in the back."
"I am in the unenviable position of trying to explain an irrational decision rationally," he told reporters prior to the interview.
Wild ambition could have motivated Afewerki, but also a desire to secure a quick military victory that could then be ratified through negotiation, he said.
Meles and Afewerki fought together to defeat former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam in May 1991. In 1993 Eritrea voted in a referendum to become a separate state in a move fully supported by Meles' government.
Since 1991 the two countries purused a policy of economic integration until frictions emerged when Eritrea introduced its own currency last year.
But if the conflict has divided the Horn of Africa neighbours, it has unified Ethiopia's fractured domestic political scene.
Speaking of the internal realignment one senior western analyst told Reuters: "Isayas (Afewerki) has managed to do in six weeks what Meles failed to do in seven years. He has united Ethiopia."