Africa-Press – Eritrea. The US Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing on East Africa, convened on 13 May this week, unfortunately repeats several misconceptions and unsubstantiated allegations against Eritrea. It is essential to clarify these matters based on verifiable facts.
At the Hearing, Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Maryland) raised concerns over a “boiling situation” between Eritrea and Ethiopia, singularly referring to Eritrea’s alleged “military mobilization”. As far as Eritrea is concerned, these statements echo skewed media reports rather than established facts or nuanced analysis.
Needless to emphasize, Eritrea is not mobilizing for war and has not, certainly, been engaged in provocative military action or political brinkmanship against Ethiopia.
And for the record, the specter of tension and apprehension in the region stem from unsettling Ethiopian pronouncements and frantic domestic media campaigns to acquire a “port and coastal territory through diplomatic and legal means if possible, and by force if necessary”.
This is an unacceptable proposition in international relations and fraught with unnecessary and avoidable destabilization of the region. In the event, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and other relevant policy experts must call a spade a spade.
In the same vein, the testimony of former State Department official Joshua Meservey, who alleges without ascertaining the true facts, that “Eritrean troops are still inside Ethiopian territory in Western Tigray” is deplorable provoking serious questions of underlying motive and intent.
As Eritrea has underlined on various occasions, such statements deliberately couched in ambiguous terms actually refer to and are euphemisms for the sovereign Eritrean territories – also endorsed in the EEBC Arbitral Ruling of 13 April 2002 – including Badme and other towns that remained occupied for almost two decades by previous Ethiopian regimes in flagrant violation of international law.
Eritrean troops have otherwise fully redeployed, after the end of the war in Northern Ethiopia, and remain inside our sovereign territory.
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