OWN CORRESPONDENT, Addis Abbaba | Tuesday 7.00pm
CITING security reasons, Ethiopia has expelled 500 more Eritreans in ongoing tit-for-tat hostility bewteen the two countries.
However a ceasefire has continued to hold along their disputed shared border, where fighting first broke out in May. The Organisation of African Unity is persisting with efforts to mediate the dispute.
The latest group of deportees left in bus convoys on Sunday for the border area in north-western Ethiopia, bringing the total number of Eritreans expelled from Ethiopia since early July to 3500. Ethiopia claims Eritrea has expelled some 6000 Ethiopians since May.
Ethiopian government spokesperson Selome Tadesse told reporters on Monday that the latest group were involved in spying or raising funds for Eritrea’s war effort.
Meanwhile, Ethiopian foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin said that Ethiopia was satisfied with the result of the OAU three-nation ministerial meeting in Burkina Faso, which determined that the contested Badme area was under Ethiopian administration before the outbreak of the war. However, he said, the conflict “was far from being over”.
OAU Secretary-General Salim Ahmed Salim, a member of the heads-of-state mediation committee, said the committee is determined to avert “full scale war” between the two countries and described the Ouagadougou meeting as “frank and useful”.