Coup Smashed, Ethiopia’s Leader Says

President Mengistu Haile Mariam, in his first public appearance since a coup attempt began two days earlier, said Thursday that loyal Ethiopian troops have crushed a bloody attempt to topple his government.

In a live nationwide radio and television address, Mengistu branded as traitors the army units that tried to seize power while he was on a state visit to East Germany.

“I feel proud and greatly honored to tell my countrymen that the 2nd Army Division based in Eritrea (province) has crushed rebel officers and their accomplices holed up in (Eritrea’s capital) Asmara,” he said.

The Marxist leader, in uniform as commander in chief of the armed forces, was referring to rebel troops who seized Radio Asmara on Tuesday and sided with the leaders of the coup attempt in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Government forces quickly regained control in Addis Ababa, killing two of the coup leaders--the armed forces chief of staff, Merid Negusie, and air force commander Amha Desta.

But some of the estimated 100,000 troops based in the northern province of Eritrea continued fighting until being routed Thursday afternoon, Radio Asmara said in a broadcast after its recapture by loyalist forces. It said six mutinous army generals there were killed.

A Western diplomat said loyal soldiers had at least temporarily recaptured the radio station in Asmara and broadcast a statement declaring loyalty to the Marxist government.

“The radio station then went dead,” the diplomat said, which suggested continued fighting between loyalists and mutineers in Ethiopia’s second-largest city.

A few hours before the report of fighting within the garrison in Eritrea, the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front declared it was suspending its 28-year-old war of secession to support the mutineers.

The front Thursday night reported fighting “among Ethiopian army units in and around Asmara” and reiterated rebel “readiness to give any kind of support and cooperation” to the mutineers.

It offered “the entire area under the control of the EPLF as a fallback zone” for the mutinous troops. The rebels control three-fourths of the countryside in Eritrea, and the army generally is confined to garrisons in the cities, including Asmara.

Diplomats in East Africa have said the mutinous troops apparently wanted an immediate end to Ethiopia’s long-running war with the rebels in Eritrea and with those fighting to topple Mengistu in neighboring Tigre province.

Defense Minister Haile Giorgis Habte-Mariam, who was killed for refusing to join the uprising, was given a state burial in Addis Ababa on Thursday.