Potemkin Party's characteristic behaviour of speaking with a forked tongue is again in full display.
In a Press Statement issued by the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry today in an apparent reaction to the El-Alamien Declaration, the PP pays lip-service to the pursuit of "peaceful engagement, mutual respect, and regional cooperation". It further urges "all regional actors to address shared challenges through constructive dialogue, partnership, and adherence to the principles of good neighborliness...".
But this is the crux of the matter.
The Potemkin Party's duplicitous antics aside, the prevailing tension that has gripped the Horn of Africa region emanates precisely from its perilous acts perpetrated over the past years and that violate international law and the prospects and opportunities of healthy regional cooperation.
Indeed, these are the poignant facts:
1. Ethiopia enjoys unfettered access to all ports in the Horn of Africa. In what can be termed as a "buyers market", it has extensive latitude to enter into mutually beneficial commercial agreements with all the coastal countries concerned. But the Potemkin Party chose to violate international law and the principles of good neighborliness to pursue an agenda of aggression and war against Eritrea to "acquire sovereign access to the sea".
2. As spelled out in previous public statements by its Foreign Ministry, the invasion of the Eritrean port of Assab must include the southern coastal zone too. In the PP's convoluted logic: "without the protective depth offered by the Dahlak islands, Assab remains an exposed coastal facility vulnerable to hostile naval power... any enduring arrangement for Ethiopia must therefore consider a dual reality: access to the coast and the strategic depth required to protect that access".
3. Similarly, the Potemkin Party has fomented unnecessary and avoidable tensions with Somalia and Sudan through willful acts that breach international law and impede regional cooperation. The illicit MOU that it signed with Somaliland in flagrant breach of Somalia's sovereignty and territorial integrity; the all-rounded support that it continues to provide to the RSF under the bidding of the UAE are deplorable acts that have jeopardized regional peace and security.
Finally, Ethiopia's insinuation that some geographic proximity to the Red Sea entitles it with the rights and responsibilities of the littoral States is too ludicrous and hollow in purely legal terms to merit response.