Proximity talks continue under hostile cloud

OAU-brokered proximity talks between neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea continued in Algiers on Monday against a background of renewed hostilities on the battlefield. Diplomats said the future of the talks looked "shaky". Each side blamed the other for a ground battle on the Assab front over the weekend. Eritrean presidential spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel told reporters
in Asmara that Eritrean forces had repulsed an Ethiopian attack. He said the Ethiopian side had lost 3,700 troops killed, wounded or taken prisoner and that he did not expect them to attempt another advance without reinforcements. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian government spokesperson Selome Taddesse dismissed the Eritrean claims. "I don't know how an army which has been running for its life for the past three weeks can speak of
[inflicting] any damage," she told Reuters.

Diplomats following the Algiers talks, sponsored by the Organisation of African Unity (OAU), said the latest fighting cast a shadow over the likelihood of any positive outcome. "The fighting around Assab makes the talks look shaky," a diplomatic source told IRIN. "If there is nothing positive by tomorrow, concern by the international community will probably
be expressed openly," the source said.

In a further contribution to the war of words between the two sides, an Eritrean Foreign Ministry statement on Monday rejected the Ethiopian assertion on 31 May that the war between the two countries was now over. If that was the case, the statement argued, why had Ethiopia bombed Assab port on 1 June and why had it launched an assault on the eastern front on 3 June, following Eritrea's redeployment of its forces there? It accused
Ethiopia of occupying new territories in western Eritrea even as the government in Addis Ababa was saying that had withdrawn from the region. The statement called on Ethiopia to redeploy its troops, immediately and unconditionally, from occupied areas and to stop launching attacks on sovereign Eritrean territory.

An Ethiopian government statement on Saturday accused Eritrea of provoking the Ethiopian forces on the eastern front. It said that Asmara was thereby attempting to improve its position at the Algiers talks, while send a clear message that it was determined to continue the war.