Ethiopia Claims Victory in War With Eritrea

The two-year war over a strip of parched, largely uninhabited borderland in the Horn of Africa for which tens of thousands of soldiers have fought and died is over, Ethiopia declared Wednesday, proclaiming total victory over Eritrea.

“As of today, we have verified that all our territories have been cleared [of] the invading army,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi told a meeting of foreign diplomats here. “As far as we are concerned, today the war is over.”

The declaration suggested that, after nearly three weeks of intense fighting, Ethiopia is satisfied that it has retaken territory seized by its neighbor two years ago, weakened the Eritrean regime and greatly diminished the ability of the Eritrean military to carry on the war.

In Eritrea, however, a government spokesman insisted that the conflict between two of the world’s poorest countries will not end until Ethiopia retreats from all undisputed Eritrean lands seized in an offensive last month.

“They can’t say the war is over when they still occupy sovereign Eritrean territory,” spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel said in Asmara, Eritrea’s capital. “Ethiopia has to withdraw to all [prewar] positions. This has to be verified independently.”

In massive military operations launched May 12 along the 620-mile frontier, Ethiopia pushed deep into Eritrean-held territory, capturing military command posts, major towns and large expanses of arid, rocky land.

Though hard-pressed by the onslaught, Eritrea denied that its troops were defeated. Instead, it said that in order to facilitate peace talks, the soldiers were voluntarily withdrawn from the contested areas that they had occupied two years ago.

Those peace negotiations resumed Tuesday in Algiers, with envoys from the United States, the Organization of African Unity and the European Union trying to broker an end to what has mushroomed into this continent’s most lethal conflict. Meles said Ethiopia’s focus will now shift to achieving a cease-fire agreement, then a formal peace settlement. But Ethiopian troops will continue to hold some “indisputably Eritrean territories” until there is a peace deal, he said.

“Until we have such an arrangement, our troops will remain in positions that they deem are necessary for military purposes, whether they are inside Eritrea or outside,” the Ethiopian leader said. He specifically mentioned areas around Zalambessa, a recently seized town on the central front.

The Clinton administration and other Western governments have denounced the war as a pointless squandering of lives and money by two of the world’s neediest countries. In his remarks to diplomats, Meles said the “international community”--apparent shorthand for the United States and other powerful countries--now has a choice.

If the outside world agrees to guarantee the security of Ethiopia’s prewar border, he promised, all Ethiopian soldiers will quit Eritrea. If it does not, Meles said, his country’s military will “maintain certain positions that are critical to guarantee the security of our army.”

The prime minister also said that Ethiopia might want any future peace deal to mandate a reduction in the size of Eritrea’s armed forces--another provision the government of President Isaias Afwerki might find impossible to stomach.

“Ethiopia is looking for guarantees that Eritrea will not attack them again,” Yemane had protested earlier in the day. “This is a joke. It is Ethiopia who is attacking.”

On Wednesday, the Eritreans accused the government here in the Ethiopian capital of attempting to “invade” new areas of their country, and of using “delaying tactics” that would allow Ethiopian troops to loot and destroy as much property as possible.

And, though Ethiopia insists that its forces have pulled back voluntarily from western Eritrea, the government in Asmara says they have left only the areas where they have been repulsed by Eritrean soldiers.

“Wherever they have had pressure, they are retreating,” Yemane declared.

In Algiers, asked if a negotiated solution to the conflict appeared close, Clinton administration special envoy Anthony Lake told reporters during a break in proceedings: “I’ve learned never to be optimistic and never to be pessimistic. But we’re always hopeful.”

On Wednesday, Ethiopia claimed to have knocked out 14 of Eritrea’s 24 army divisions, and the military’s general command hailed the “shining victory” of its forces in the May offensive. Meles said the Ethiopian army confirmed Wednesday that Eritrean forces had left Bade, the last swath of contested territory they had reportedly been occupying on the eastern section of the border.

“If the Eritrean army has had enough,” Meles said, “then the war is over.”

On one section of the central front, about 15 miles west of Zalambessa, visiting Western journalists were able to verify that Ethiopians by the thousands were withdrawing from Eritrea, leaving units to guard the territory they had captured.

As the sun set Tuesday, the reporters watched as at least 8,000 infantrymen trudged southward in long columns from the conquered Eritrean town of Tsorena, kicking up clouds of dust that enveloped them.

On a sun-scoured moonscape of naked shale and withered trees, the Ethiopians claim to have outflanked the Eritrean trenches and crushed or routed seven or eight divisions--as many as 48,000 soldiers--along a 40-mile line last week. The journalists were able to visit Tsorena, five miles inside Eritrea, and verify that it was in Ethiopian hands. Army officers said the front now lies far to the north, as much as 40 miles inside Eritrea.

“We’ve been instructed to cool it now,” an Ethiopian colonel who declined to give his name said. “Wait. That’s what a soldier is supposed to do.”

As the Ethiopian troops moved south, they were in high spirits. “We are lions!” some yelled to the reporters in Amharic, their country’s dominant language. Along with their assault rifles, mortars, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and other weapons, some infantrymen carried radios and listened to reports of their exploits.

Some of the journalists wondered aloud if it was worth dying to own such bleak, sparsely populated terrain, where only a few herdsmen and farmers live in small stone huts with thatched roofs. “Does land have to have grass and water to have value?” said Netsanet Asfaw, a member of Ethiopia’s Parliament who escorted the reporters. “This is our country.”

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Dahlburg reported from Addis Ababa and Tsorena, and Simmons from Asmara. Associated Press contributed to this report.