Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki is accusing the Ethiopian government of accumulating weapons, including technological ones, to launch a war against his country.
Afwerki made the allegation while making a speech on the occasion of the 34th Independence Day celebration at Asmara Stadium over the weekend.
He said that Ethiopia’s Prosperity Party is spending millions on the procurement of advanced weapons with the aim of targeting Eritrea in war.
Eritrea fought a bitter two-year border conflict with Ethiopia which ended in 2000. Both countries were one political entity until the Eritrean war of independence led to its breakaway from the rest of Ethiopia in the early 1990s.
“From Oromummaa ideology, the move to create a Semitic/Kushitic divide, and the Afar people’s land are agenda items the Prosperity Party is pursuing to advance war against Eritrea,” Afwerki said.
Confrontational relations between the two governments have been public for many months now.
Eritrea has been releasing stern statements in reaction to what it called “war-mongering” from the Prosperity Party side.
President Isaias trashed Abiy Ahmed’s government as a new agent or puppet clique of other powers—insinuating Western powers.
The Eritrean leader described Ethiopia as a country that was prone to “chaos and destruction for 80 years, as a proxy state”.
He asserted that it is something that is archived and well known throughout the history of the 21st century.
He blamed the Cold War for sharpening the ideological divide between Washington and Moscow, which Ethiopia had played against each other.
The ruling party led by Abiy Ahmed and the Eritrean government started on good terms in 2018 when the former proclaimed to have a new relation based on a policy of mutual benefit.
It ended two decades of a no-war-no-peace relation, for which PM Abiy was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.
The Ethiopian government has not commented on Afwerki’s comments.
