Ethiopia’s PM Abiy rejects int’l calls to open talks with Tigrayan rebels, says country ‘capable’ of resolving its problems

By The Star Staff Writer

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed on Wednesday made clear that his country will not welcome any international mediators pushing for talks with the Tigrayan rebel group, which he accused of initiating the 22-day-old war raging in the northern part of the country and of subverting his government’s reform agenda in a bid to return to power “through the use of force.”

“We reject any interference in our internal affairs,” Abiy said in a statement on Wednesday. “We therefore respectfully urge the international community to refrain from any unwelcome and unlawful acts of interference and respect the fundamental principles of non-intervention under international law.”

EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell a day earlier urged the African Union to spearhead talks between Addis Ababa and the rebellious northern region of Tigray, saying dialogue was “the only way forward to avoid further destabilization.”

Borrell made the remarks after meeting with Ethiopia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Demeke Mekonnen on Tuesday in Brussels. The UN Security Council has also held a meeting to discuss the war in Tigray without issuing any statement.

The incoming US administration of President-elect Joe Biden also chipped in with calls for talks.

“Both sides should immediately begin dialogue facilitated by the AU,” tweeted Jake Sullivan, who Biden named as his national security adviser.

Abiy stuck to his guns on Wednesday, saying the ongoing offensive against the TPLF, dubbed “law enforcement operation,” is “intended to defend and preserve the sovereignty and integrity of the state of Ethiopia, to restore law and order throughout its territory, and to bring the perpetrators of the criminal act to justice.”

“Our internal peace was threatened by hardline members of the old order, and particularly of the TPLF who deployed everything within their hands to subvert the reform process and bring themselves back to power through the use of force,” he said.

Abiy said the international community “should stand by until the government of Ethiopia submits its requests for assistance.” He accused TPLF of taking up arms against the Ethiopian state and violating the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance that prohibits unconstitutional change of government “in any Member State as a serious threat to stability, peace, security and development.”

Prime Minister Abiy sent federal forces to the Tigrayn region on Nov. 4 in response to an attack by TPLF forces on an army base to steal artillery and military equipment. He has since cut off the mountainous region from the rest of the country, shuttering telephone and internet services and barring journalists from entering the region.

Abiy gave the TPLF forces 72-hour ultimatum, which was to expire on Wednesday. Authorities said “a large number of Tigray militia and special forces” have so far surrendered.

The three-week-old war has killed hundreds of combatants, sent tens of thousands of refugees across the border into Sudan and led to large scale revenge killings, most notably the massacre in the town of Mai-Kadra in Tigray Region’s Western Zone in which at least 600 civilians were killed, according to the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission, which cited eyewitnesses and other local sources who say “the number is likely to be higher.”

The rights group said in preliminary findings released Tuesday that an informal Tigrayan youth group called “Samri”, local police and militia carried out the massacre that began with the execution of a former soldier, Abiy Tsegaye, who was an ethnic Amhara, in front of his family and whose body was thrown into fire.

Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, accused the TPLF of frustrating the democratization process in Ethiopia, saying “the TPLF leadership orchestrated a spate of violent attacks by training, arming and financing criminal elements to target ethnic and religious minorities in different parts of the country.”

The Ethiopian government has repeatedly rejected calls for dialogue from the international community, even after South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, the chairman of the African Union, formed a team of three former African presidents last week to help broker a deal between the rebel group and Ethiopia’s federal government.

The prime minister said his country was “very much capable and willing to resolve this situation in accordance with its laws and its international obligations.” Addis Ababa, he said, “appreciates” the international community’s “well-meaning concerns.”

Addis Ababa dismissed as fake news reports that it accepted to sit down with what it called “TPLF’s criminal element.” It, however, cryptically said Abiy would meet with the AU’s envoys “to speak with them on one-on-one.”

“As a sovereign state,” Abiy said in his statement, “Ethiopia has every right to uphold and enforce its laws within its own territory. And that is exactly what were are doing.”

Abiy’s predecessor, Hailemariam Desalegn, on Tuesday warned the international community against putting pressure on Abiy to end the war too soon before defeating and bringing to justice Tigrayan leaders who he said posed a “threat to the peace and security of the broader region.”

“The TPLF leadership, as it stands, is nothing more than a criminal enterprise that should not be included in any dialogue meant to chart the future of Ethiopia,” Hailemariam wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine. He said the “very prospect of negotiating with the TPLF’s current leadership is an error—as a matter of both principle and prudence.”