Eritrea sends envoy to open ties with Iran

[Oromia]

http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=12/16/2006&Cat=2&Num=005

 

ASMARA (Reuters) -- Eritrea said on Friday it had sent an envoy to Iran to establish diplomatic and economic ties with Tehran as its relations with Western nations sour over a border dispute with Horn of Africa neighbor Ethiopia.

 

Both Iran and Eritrea have routinely criticized the United States and the United Nations over what they say is foreign meddling in their affairs.

 

Andeab Meskel, head of Afro-Asia-Pacific desk at Eritrea's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said Iran had responded positively to initial efforts to establish ties. Tehran had no comment.

 

The Red Sea state has also begun to strengthen ties over the last few months with Sudan and Libya, both of which have been highly critical of western nations.

 

Andeab denied that an anti-western agenda was behind Eritrea's blossoming relations with Iran, Libya and Sudan.

 

"It might seem like that, but no, we are not joining forces against the United States and we don't have any intention to do that," he said.

 

Analysts say Eritrea has in a matter of years gone from being a U.S. ally to a front man for rival interests from Muslim north Africa and the Middle East.

 

Eritrea has lambasted the West for complicity with Ethiopia's rejection of a 2002 final and binding border decision delimiting their shared border.

 

The neighbors fought a three-year war over scrubby plains and dusty towns. A 2000 peace deal ended the conflict, but the nations soon became locked in a diplomatic stalemate after an independent border commission gave the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea.

[Somali_Friend]

Now you don't need any other indicators to know that the eritrean dictator is in deep trouble and wildly swinging from one place to another in desperado.

Somalis know this situation better than any other country. When dictators start doing this set your clock for the count down.

Diplomatic trips and moves that do not have any historical, heritage and cultural or trade and economical basis are wild swings of desperate man.

 

He will go to Riyadh next week and explain exactly what he is doing, otherwise expect the Saudi to give him his final kick to the bin. They can do it better than anyone except ethiopia.

 

If this man had any dignity, the test was Sudan. The Sudanese had hosted close to a million eritreans and ethiopians for years. Only the ethiopians had the tamarity to say thank you. Isayas on the contrary tormented the Sudanese in the service of the US, which the ethiopians refused to do against Sudan.