Eritrea Accuses Ethiopia of Reviving Expansionist and War Rhetoric

The minister asserted that Eritrea has for decades been “the party harmed by Ethiopia’s expansionist tendencies,” starting from the annulment of the federation and the forcible annexation of Eritrea, through the 1998–2000 war — a conflict that former Ethiopian officials admitted had been decided upon two weeks before the parliament’s declaration, with goals extending beyond Badme to include an attempted seizure of the port of Assab.

Gebre Meskel also dismissed Addis Ababa’s allegations of an “Eritrean doctrine to destabilize Ethiopia” as illogical, noting that a country currently experiencing widespread conflicts across most of its regions “cannot attribute its crises to a smaller state with limited resources.”

He sharply criticized what he called attempts by Ethiopian officials to “belittle the Eritrean economy,” pointing out that Ethiopia — despite receiving more than $84 billion in international assistance — faces unprecedented levels of poverty and need, with over 21 million people requiring urgent humanitarian aid, while internal divisions deepen as a result of governing policies he described as “generators of crisis.”