In a statement on 6 November, Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel accused Ethiopia's Prosperity Party of preparing an invasion to take Eritrea's southern Red Sea coast and linked the war in Tigray to that aim. Addis Ababa accuses Asmara of aggression.
Eritrea's Minister of Information, Yemane Gebremeskel, has accused Ethiopia's ruling Prosperity Party (PP) of preparing to invade Eritrea to gain access to the Red Sea, in a statement published on X on Friday 6 November, People Daily reported.
Yemane traced the dispute to 13 October 2023, when he said the party publicly declared its intention to secure sovereign access to the sea. He said this breached international law and the Joint Declaration of Peace and Friendship signed by the two countries in Asmara on 9 July 2018. He accused Ethiopia of escalating through media campaigns, military threats and rearmament, and said the party's aims had widened. "The scope of the PP's impending invasion was also broadened to include forcible incorporation of Eritrea's southern coastline for the establishment of 'a sovereign naval force with strategic depth'," he wrote, as quoted by People Daily.
Tigray and the UN
The minister said the alleged plan became operational when Ethiopian forces launched operations in Tigray in September, citing remarks he attributed to Ethiopia's deputy chief of staff that Mekelle would be "a mere stop-over" and that the main objective was to plant the Ethiopian flag on the Red Sea. CERHA has not independently verified those remarks. He also described Ethiopia's 9 October letter to the UN Security Council, which invoked its right to self-defence, as a pretext for aggression, and said the situation warranted "unequivocal condemnation as well as requisite deterrent measures" under the UN Charter.
Ethiopia's position
In that 9 October letter, Ethiopia accused Eritrean forces of crossing the border, occupying territory and supporting armed groups, describing an "all-out invasion of parts of northern Ethiopia by Eritrea". Eritrea rejected the claims the next day. On 5 November, Ethiopia's State Minister for Foreign Affairs, Hadera Abera, accused Eritrea of continued incursions and support for rebel groups in a meeting with an EU delegation, according to Ethiopian state media. CERHA found no Ethiopian government response to Yemane's statement at the time of writing.
The statement came a day after President Isaias Afwerki received China's special envoy for Horn of Africa affairs, Hu Changchun, as Beijing tries to ease tensions between the two neighbours. Ethiopia, landlocked since Eritrea's independence in 1993, says sea access is an existential issue; Eritrea says its sovereignty and coastline are not negotiable.
Image: Satellite view of the Eritrean coast near Assab on the Red Sea. Coordenação-Geral de Observação da Terra/INPE, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0.