Ethiopia Government

Ethiopia's Marxist government and rebels from the northern province of Tigre began peace talks in Rome on Saturday after a long delay arguing over whom the rebels represent. Delegations representing Ethiopia's Soviet-backed government and the Tigre People's Liberation Front (TPLF) drove into the Villa Madama, a secluded government guest house on a wooded hill in the suburbs Saturday morning. But it was another nine hours before they met to start talks.

Try to win them. If you cannot, let hardship teach them. -- Ethiopian proverb recited by President Meles Zenawi * From out of the lava mountains today, a man drives a donkey. On the back of the donkey is a green canvas bag. In the bag is Ethiopia's future--and, not inconceivably, the future of Africa. Among the oldest nations in the world, Ethiopia stands at one of its great crossroads. In the sack on the donkey's back are election ballots.

The Ethiopian government has put 2 million people at risk of death from famine with its decision to bar foreign-relief workers from its northern provinces while it escalates the stalemated military campaign against rebel forces. It is a callous and shocking action that suggests the government is willing to use starvation where military repression has failed. Already, there is evidence that distribution of famine relief in the two affected areas, Eritrea and Tigray, has come to a halt.

They killed, tortured, despoiled and terrorized an ancient country--and wrote it all down. In ghastly detail. They affixed their signatures and stamped the official seal to their 17 years of tyranny and filed it away. Then they lost a civil war.

Still rejoicing over its dramatic airlift of Ethiopian Jews, Israel began Sunday to find homes, jobs and schools for the 14,000 newcomers, some of whom have never switched on a light bulb. At temporary living centers across Israel, doctors gave check-ups and volunteers distributed clothing, taught the immigrants to use kitchen utensils and toilets and collected lists of names to aid relatives seeking family members.

It was an important government monument and this city's municipal joke: a giant bronze statue of V. I. Lenin on a barren hillside square, depicted with his hand gripping his lapel and, in a lumbering stride, heading east. The joke was that the figure was oriented that way so that when the revolution came, Lenin would show Ethiopia's deposed Marxist leaders the way to the airport.

With its capital operating in a near-normal atmosphere for the time being, Ethiopia's new government began Friday to turn its attention to the country's most dire problem--the famine menacing as many as 7 million of its citizens and refugees. Relief operations here all but ceased as the country's military and government crisis climaxed with the flight of longtime dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam on May 21 and the subsequent collapse of his Marxist government.

A transitional government made up of former rebel groups was formed Friday to prepare Ethiopia's first democratic elections, but secessionist Eritrean leaders refused to join the alliance. The government, which is dominated by guerrillas who toppled former President Mengistu Haile Mariam in late May, inherits an empty treasury, heavy debts and the problem of feeding as many as 7 million famine victims.

The government Saturday freed seven female members of the former Ethiopian Royal Family imprisoned since a 1974 Marxist revolution ended the 44-year rule of Emperor Haile Selassie. The women were greeted by relatives in a tearful reunion in the courtyard of the police headquarters, said a journalist who witnessed the release.

It is the received wisdom among travelers in Africa that Ethiopia is a place like none other south of the Sahara. Its written history places its cultural heritage on a par with that of China and Egypt, and its people cherish the legend that they are descended from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.

For the first time in their history, Ethiopians will go to the polls on Sunday to vote in democratic elections. The polling fulfills a pledge made in May, 1991, by the rebel Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front when it took over the government. But the voting has already been postponed once because of ethnic clashes. Even now, voting in parts of the south and east of the country will be deferred until later.

When four bombs went off in hotels and restaurants here earlier this month, wounding at least 18 people, the significance of the first explosions heard in the city since last May's battle to overthrow the nation's dictator was lost on almost no one. To many, they marked what could be the start of Ethiopia's new civil war.

Any unwitting observers who happened upon a public ceremony in a stadium near here recently could be forgiven for thinking they had strayed across the border into another country. Speaker after speaker evoked the name of the "Nation of Oromia," and the highlight was the presentation of degrees to 250 people who had just concluded a three-month course in Oromo history and language.

A transitional government made up of former rebel groups was formed Friday to prepare Ethiopia's first democratic elections, but secessionist Eritrean leaders refused to join the alliance. The government, which is dominated by guerrillas who toppled former President Mengistu Haile Mariam in late May, inherits an empty treasury, heavy debts and the problem of feeding as many as 7 million famine victims.

The haul of weapons this country's new rulers collected from its former government officials last month was impressive in its diversity. The guns lay in a pile at the collecting station, where a youthful rebel soldier, now part of a regular army, issued receipts: Soviet-made carbines and AK-47 automatic rifles predominated, but there were also Belgian rifles, Israeli Uzis and even a lonely American Winchester.

Fires still smoldered Wednesday in a southern suburb of Addis Ababa demolished by a huge explosion at an ammunition dump Tuesday. Ethiopian Red Cross official Tebebe Yemani Berhan said the massive death toll feared earlier had not materialized. He said Tuesday's early-morning blast razed 5,000 houses and killed more than 100 people. But rescue workers who sifted through the rubble overnight found far fewer bodies than expected.

Ethiopian President Mengistu Haile Mariam denied that his Marxist government is using food as a weapon against secessionists in the north, where guerrilla war and a government drive have jeopardized Western-financed famine relief. Mengistu, at a six-hour press conference with foreign reporters, said the rebels are using the food deficit to elicit sympathy. He charged they are fighting a proxy war to consolidate Arab control of the Red Sea.

Hundreds of people were believed killed or injured when this city's largest ammunition and fuel depot exploded early Tuesday morning in what Ethiopia's new leaders called an act of sabotage by agents of the previous regime. Repeated blasts, which began shortly after 4 a.m., illuminated the night sky with fireballs and showers of red and green tracer bullets. Rockets ignited by the fire roared off, landing miles away. The windows of buildings as far as two miles away were shattered.

It is the received wisdom among travelers in Africa that Ethiopia is a place like none other south of the Sahara. Its written history places its cultural heritage on a par with that of China and Egypt, and its people cherish the legend that they are descended from the union of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba.