“Eritrea could not risk another war with Ethiopia, because its troops do not match the power of Ethiopian armed forces. They are not capable,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on Thursday night in the latest rhetoric between the two.
At the end of July, the UN Security Council disbanded its peacekeeping mission on the volatile border where Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a 1998 to 2000 war that killed 70 000 people.
The two governments intensely dislike each other and still do not agree on their frontier, despite its “virtual demarcation” on maps by an independent boundary commission.
Both say they do not want another war, but keep their militaries on alert and accuse each other of fomenting tensions.
“Eritrea also knows the consequences of igniting another conflict with Ethiopia,” added Meles in a statement on state TV.
Because it knew it could not win on the battleground, Eritrea was trying to destabilise Ethiopia by “sending armed terrorists” into its neighbour and round the region, Meles said.
“As the whole world knows, Eritrea is now engaged in training, arming and dispatching armed terrorists to destabilise countries of the Horn [of Africa],” he said.
Eritrea on Wednesday denied any hostile
intentions towards neighbouring Djibouti following a border clash in which two Djibouti soldiers were killed.
Dozens of Djibouti soldiers were also wounded in the disputed Ras Doumeira border area on Tuesday when Eritrean soldiers opened fire on deserters, diplomatic and military sources said.
The incident was the first since a tense border stand-off was triggered by an Eritrean military incursion into Djibouti on April 16.
“As the Eritrean government has repeatedly asserted, although it is closely and patiently following up the developments and its sponsors, it hereby reiterates that it would under no circumstances get involved in an invitation of squabbles and acts of hostility designed to undermine good-neighbourliness,” the Eritrean Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
The Djibouti Foreign Ministry issued a statement on Wednesday accusing Eritrea of seeking to destabilise the Horn of Africa region by attacking Djibouti and vowed to use all available means to defend itself.
The United States has warned its nationals against travelling to the Djibouti-Eritrean border.
The UUS has more than 1,200 troops stationed in Djibouti, which hosts an anti-terrorism task force in the Horn of Africa. France also has a base in its former colony.
The two nations have clashed at least twice over the border area at the southern end of the Red Sea.
In April 1996 they almost went to war after a Djibouti official accused Eritrea of shelling Ras Doumeira.(Mail & Guardian)
