Eritrea wants a peaceful and united Somalia and believes now is the best time in nearly two decades to foster genuine political dialogue.
Eritrea is becoming a "giant prison" due to its government’s policies of mass detention, torture and prolonged military conscription, says a report.
Eritrea on Wednesday slammed the US for imposing an arms ban over concerns that the Red Sea state was aiding terrorists in the region.
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/ 11 September 2008
Eritrea on Thursday condemned Canada’s refusal to grant its foreign minister a visa on the grounds that he took part in the war for independence.
The UN Security Council voted on Wednesday to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Belgium has presented a draft Security Council resolution that would end the UN mission monitoring the border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
God surveys the world one day, seeing the mountains, valleys, seas and all there is. Suddenly God stops and exclaims: ”Why is Eritrea so green?”
The African Union demanded on Monday that Eritrea immediately withdraw its troops from a border area in dispute with Djibouti.
The UN Security Council considered on Monday a plan to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
France is providing support to Djibouti during border clashes with neighbouring Eritrea that the Djiboutian president has described as war.
Eritrea on Thursday denied any hostile intentions towards neighbouring Djibouti following a border clash in which two Djibouti soldiers were killed.
Fisherman Ali Osman grins as he hauls a large, yellow-and-silver emperor fish out of the shallow Red Sea waters off Eritrea. A minute later, his friend pulls out a baby shark, sweating in the heat as he chucks it on the rocks. Other fish flop on the sea’s flat surface as four young fishermen wade through the high tide to take back an impressive haul to their village, Hirgigo.
When Italian architect Giuseppe Pettazzi inaugurated Eritrea’s plane-shaped Fiat Tagliero service station in 1938, he stunned onlookers by pulling out a gun. There, the story behind Africa’s finest piece of Futurist architecture goes hazy.
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/ 16 January 2008
Eritrea has accepted a ”virtual demarcation” of its border with Ethiopia and wants Addis Ababa to remove its troops from Eritrean soil, a statement published on Wednesday said. The two nations have been deadlocked over a 1 000km border since a 2002 decision by an independent boundary commission gave the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea.
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/ 28 November 2007
It’s hard to see the looming threat of war with Ethiopia as you walk Eritrea’s tree-lined boulevards or enter its Italian-style cafes. But beneath the Eritrean capital’s tranquil surface, many Eritreans say they are worried about a repeat of the 1998 to 2000 border war that killed about 70 000 people.
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/ 22 November 2007
Holding up a grubby, worn banknote, the ex-rebel fighter points proudly to an image famous across Eritrea — defiant liberation soldiers raising a flag on a mountain peak. It’s 10 years this month since Africa’s youngest nation enthusiastically launched its own currency in November 1997, the nakfa.
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/ 21 November 2007
Eritrea said on Wednesday arch-foe Ethiopia had ”long since declared war” on Asmara by refusing to implement a five-year-old border ruling marking their shared frontier. Analysts and diplomats fear heightened tensions on the Horn of Africa rivals’ frontier could erupt into a new conflict seven years after they fought a war.
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/ 11 November 2007
Surrounded by yellow papers crackling to the touch, archivists painstakingly catalogue documents and photographs that make up the history of a nation — and the vertebrae of Eritrea’s national archive. It’s a record of one of Africa’s most remarkable rebel armies, documenting the past spirit of optimism that drove their 30-year bitter guerrilla war.
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/ 27 October 2007
Eritrea accused arch-foe Ethiopia on Saturday of plotting to invade it ahead of a late-November deadline to mark their disputed border on maps. Analysts and diplomats fear heightened tensions on the Horn of Africa rivals’ frontier could erupt into a new conflict seven years after they fought a war that killed about 70 000 people.
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/ 16 October 2007
Eritrea’s powerful head of internal security, Colonel Simon Ghebredengel, survived an assassination attempt last week in Asmara, a senior government official said on Tuesday. ”There was a failed assassination attempt on Saturday October 13 on the colonel,” Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu said. ”He is in a very stable condition.”
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/ 28 September 2007
Eritrea, in a letter published on Friday, urged the United Nations to force its arch-foe, Ethiopia, to urgently implement a border ruling, warning it feared Addis Ababa was preparing to resume war. In the letter, Foreign Minister Osman Saleh said he believed that Ethiopian threats to scrap the Algiers peace deal that ended their bloody 1998 to 2000 border war were a precursor to an attack.
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/ 16 September 2007
Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki has backed a new Somali opposition alliance, saying arch-foe Ethiopia’s fight against insurgents in Mogadishu was doomed to fail, state media reported on Saturday. The formation of the group, including top Islamist leaders, in Asmara this week has generated yet more friction between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
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/ 12 September 2007
Somali opposition figures meeting in Eritrea united to form a new ”liberation” movement on Wednesday to seek a military or diplomatic solution to conflict in their homeland, a spokesperson said. The main aim of the organisation, called the Alliance for the Liberation of Somalia, is to secure the exit of Ethiopian troops who are backing the interim government in Somalia.
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/ 12 September 2007
Somali Islamist leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys dismissed United States terrorism allegations against him and instead blamed Washington for instability in the Horn of Africa, in an interview published on Wednesday. ”The US cannot present any concrete evidence for its unfounded accusations,” Aweys said.
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/ 11 September 2007
Eritrea said on Tuesday it will take every precaution to avoid war with arch-foe Ethiopia over their disputed border, but demanded Addis Ababa comply with a five-year-old boundary ruling. Ties between the Horn of Africa neighbours are at their lowest since a 1998 to 2000 war that killed 70 000 people, analysts say.
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/ 10 September 2007
Somalia’s opposition leaders predicted on Monday that a further surge in an Islamist-led insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu, could defeat Ethiopian troops supporting the government there within two months. "The liberation forces are gaining strength day after day," said Zakariya Mahamud Abdi, spokesperson of a congress in Eritrea’s capital, Asmara.
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/ 5 September 2007
Frustrated avant-garde architects from an architecturally conservative early 20th-century Europe used Asmara, the Eritrean capital, to experiment with radical new designs. They left a legacy valued by Eritreans and by experts worldwide, but lesser known outside this little-visited country.
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/ 4 September 2007
Somali opposition leaders, including several senior Islamists, are to meet in Eritrea from Thursday to try to unite against the Ethiopian-backed government at talks intended to a rival a Mogadishu peace conference. Many Somali dissidents have already made their home in Eritrea, which has been accused by the United States and United Nations of sending arms to insurgents.
Somalia’s top Islamist leader vowed on Saturday to wage a stronger insurgency in the capital, Mogadishu, until all Ethiopian troops withdraw from the war-shattered Horn of Africa nation. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed said Somalis must defend their nation against Ethiopian forces deployed in Mogadishu to bolster the feeble government.
Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki warned Washington that its policies were leading the world on a ”dangerous path”, an official statement said on Monday. Two days after Washington said it was considering adding Eritrea to its list of ”state sponsors of terrorism”, Issaias gave an angry two-hour interview broadcast late on Sunday on state television.
Leaders of a new Darfur rebel grouping will travel back to Sudan’s restive western region to unite their armies, a rebel official said on Monday. Five rebel groups joined last month in Eritrea under the umbrella United Front for Liberation and Development, but have yet to integrate their armed wings.
Somalia’s exiled opposition leaders on Monday lashed out at the international community’s support for the Ethiopian-backed interim government and defended the deadly insurgency against Mogadishu. "The resistance of Somali people is a legitimate response" to Ethiopian occupation, former Parliament speaker Sharif Hassan Sheikh Aden said.