The Eritrean Foreign Minister accused the United States administration of supporting the Tigray People’s Liberation Movement (TPLM) over the past 20 years of the current war in northern Tigray’s Tigray region, saying it was unfounded to blame Eritrea for the fighting.
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Osman Saleh, in a letter to the UN Security Council, circulated on Monday, accusing President Joe Biden’s administration of “causing further conflict and destabilization” through disruption and threats in the region.
“The obvious aim of these actions is to revive the remnants of the TPLF regime,” he said.
The TPLF led the coalition that ruled Ethiopia for almost three decades until Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed came to power in 2018. Abiy alienated the TPLF in part by trying to make peace with his arch-enemy Eritrea and then sent Ethiopian government forces into the region in November. .
Thousands are estimated to have been killed in the war, which has sent a third of the region’s 6 million people on the run. Government forces are now allied with soldiers from the neighboring Eritrea, who are blamed for many atrocities. Saleh’s letter does not mention Eritrean troops in Tigray, despite international calls for them to withdraw.
Several witnesses, rape survivors, officials and aid workers said Eritrean soldiers had been spotted far from the border, sometimes dressed in pale Ethiopian army fatigue and controlling important roads and access to certain communities.
The Ethiopian government believes that TPLF fighters are terrorists who have defied Abiy’s authority. But the recent atrocities seem to have increased support for TPLF.
The Eritrean Foreign Minister accused the TPLF of carrying out a disinformation campaign to camouflage its illegal system of arming itself and overthrowing Abiy’s government, and called on the Security Council to “take appropriate action to address the injustice.”
Saleh also criticized the US State Department’s announcement of visa restrictions for current or former Eritrean and Ethiopian government and military officials, saying it was just the latest in a series of “unilateral acts of threats and disruption.”
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