Addis Ababa summit aimed against Eritea: Eritrean FM

DOHA, Dec 29 (AFP) — Visiting Eritrean Foreign Minister, Ali Seid Abdella, charged Monday that a three-way summit in Addis Ababa between Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen was “aimed against Eritrea”.

“This summit is essentially aimed against Eritrea,” Ali told AFP during a visit to Qatar as part of a Gulf tour.

“Two years ago, the Sudanese foreign minister declared in Sanaa that the axis (Ethiopia, Sudan and Yemen) was sending a message to Eritrea,” Ali said.

“But this will not affect us much because the politics of the axis are outdated,” he added.

Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, Sudan’s President Omar al-Beshir and his Yemeni counterpart Ali Abdullah Saleh took turns to criticise Eritrea during a break in their tripartite summit, which opened Monday.

“It is not a secret Eritrea’s desire is to destabilise Sudan by arming and training rebels and sending them into Sudan,” Beshir told a news conference on the sidelines of the summit, convened to discuss and sign a cooperation treaty between the three states.

“It is my conviction that Eritrea will remain a destabilising force in the region, but Sudan wants to solve any outstanding problems through dialogue,” Beshir said.

Tensions have been high between Sudan and Eritrea since Khartoum accused Asmara of being behind an offensive in October 2002 by rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) in the east of the country, charges Asmara denied.

Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea are tense because of disagreements over the delineation of their border in the wake of a frontier war they fought between 1998 and 2000.

A dispute between Eritrea and Yemen over the Hanish archipelago in the Red Sea degenerated into armed conflict in December 1995 when Eritrea captured the island of Greater Hanish.

The dispute was, however, resolved and an agreement reached through French mediation in 1996 when the two countries committed themselves to respecting the verdict of an international arbitration tribunal.