An Ethiopian official says the country’s military was provoked into launching an attack on Eritrean forces in a disputed border area.
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“We’re capable of waging a full scale war against Eritrea, but we choose not to”, Ethiopian government spokesman Getachew Reda said on Tuesday.
In a short statement issued on Sunday night, the Eritrean government said Ethiopia had “unleashed an attack against Eritrea on the Tsorona Central Front”.
Ethiopia’s Information Minister Getachew Reda described the clashes as “an Eritrean initiative”.
Ethiopia and Eritrea have no diplomatic relations.
A resident in the Ethiopian town of Zalambessa, across the border from Tsorona, told Reuters news agency by telephone that he had heard the sound of shelling on Sunday and into Monday morning.
He said the clash between the two armies occurred on Sunday and Monday.
None of the clashes have been verified by both governments. The Ethiopian government said Eritrea started it. Getting more information out of Eritrea is like trying to see into a pitch-dark room: The government is one of the most secretive, isolated and repressive nations in the world. The two countries have accused each other of triggering the attack over the weekend.
Getachew told BBC that he suspected that the main reason Eritrea launched the attack was to try and deflect attention away from the United Nations human rights report – claims the Eritrean government denied.
The U.N. accuses Eritrea of rights abuses for indefinite national service, where Eritreans can spend many years in low-paid work under conscription.
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He accused Ethiopia of being hostile to Eritrea’s sovereignty. The Commission presented its “final and binding delimitation decision” on 13 April 2002, with the flashpoint of the 1998-2000 war, the small, rural border town of Badme, being awarded to Eritrea. Ethiopia at first refused to agree to the border demarcation and then called for dialogue before it would implement the decision.
