The Indian Ocean Newsletter
No. 826
September 26, 1998
REGIONAL DIPLOMACY; ERITREA
HEADLINE: Asmara Leery of Washington

Eritrea has turned up the volume in referring to the US Administration which it suspects increasingly of sympathizing with Ethiopian ideology in the border dispute between the neighbouring countries. When US national security adviser Samuel (Sandy) Berger told Eritrean head of state Issayas Afeworki, in a telephone conversation on September 16, that his predecessor Anthony Lake would be visiting Addis Ababa and Asmara to start another peace initiative between the belligerents, Afeworki explained his reserves adding that he would not oppose the mission. However, on September 17 he began mining the terrain under Lake's feet during an interview on Eritrean state television centred on the border dispute.

For the first time, Afeworki presented clearly his criticism of the US stand, saying the US Administration "were not free from the blame of complicating the problem right from the beginning";. According to Afeworki, when the Ethiopian parliament called in May for the country to mobilize against Eritrea, it "was not alone in taking its ellicose decision"; but "was goaded by some quarters to take the move". Even before to the Organization of African Unity conference in Ouagadougou in early June, the US team (headed by US assistant secretary of state for African affair Susan Rice and mediating the conflict) "had been told by TPLF authorities (the EPRDF hard-core in power in Addis Ababa) about the bombing of Asmara".

"Instead of trying to prevent the bombing", the US mediators merely" asked for a day or two in order to evacuate its citizens" from Eritrea. For Afeworki, there was no doubt that "some US authorities were for a quick fix and bombing Asmara into submission was not overruled".
In the hustle of the presidential interview, the Eritrean foreign The U.S. secret war in the Horn of Africa
ministry distributed a communique on September 18 accusing the United States of delaying possibilities for finding solutions to the dispute with Ethiopia. The diplomatic intervention was presented as having "contrary and restrictive" effects on initiatives by OAU secretary general Salim Ahmed Salim to which the Eritrean party seemed ready to turn.