WASHINGTON - The United States on Friday slapped new sanctions on Eritrea over the deadly conflict in neighboring Ethiopia, which it warned was at danger of "implosion" without a negotiated settlement.
Ahead of a three-nation trip to Africa next week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken pressed for the start of talks between the Ethiopian government and rebels.
A failure to reach a settlement "would lead to the implosion of Ethiopia and spill over into other countries in the region, and that would be disastrous for the Ethiopian people and also for countries in the region," Blinken told reporters.
"The other path is to halt all of the military actions that are currently underway, sit down to negotiate a real ceasefire to make sure that humanitarian assistance can get in to all of the regions where people are in need," he said.
"I believe that that is still not only possible, but necessary."
The United States has condemned both Tigrayan rebels and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a onetime ally and Nobel Peace Prize winner, over a year of bloodshed that has left hundreds of thousands in famine-like conditions.
- Not targeting Ethiopians -
President Joe Biden in September signed an executive order paving the way for sanctions on Ethiopia.
But measures imposed Friday over the conflict conspicuously did not target Ethiopians and instead focused on Eritrea, one of the world's most closed states which is already under a raft of international sanctions.
Eritrea has sent troops to back Abiy, who launched an offensive a year ago against the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) over an attack on the federal army by the once dominant force.
"Eritrean forces have operated throughout Ethiopia during the conflict and have been responsible for massacres, looting and sexual assaults," a Treasury Department statement said.
The sanctions targeted the Eritrean Defense Force and President Isaias Afwerki's political party, the People's Front for Democracy and Justice, as well as other players in the authoritarian state.
The United States has repeatedly urged Eritrea to pull out of Ethiopia, including when US special envoy Jeffrey Feltman met Afwerki in May.
The Treasury Department said that Eritrean soldiers have disguised themselves in old Ethiopian military uniforms, blocked critical aid routes and threatened staff in a key hospital in northern Ethiopia.
Cameron Hudson, a former US official now at the Atlantic Council, said there was little evidence to back up assertions in a recent joint UN-Ethiopian human rights investigation that Eritrean troops have committed the bulk of the egregious crimes in the conflict.
"In fact, this action seems inconsistent with recent US statements which have been more critical of Ethiopian and Tigrayan actors for the crimes being committed," he said.
"Prime Minister Abiy remains in the driver's seat of this conflict and choosing to once again avoid sanctioning Ethiopian entities reflects a belief from Washington that Abiy can be engaged and his approach to this conflict changed."
- Diplomatic steps -
Former Nigerian president Olusegun Obasanjo, serving as the African Union's special envoy, and Feltman both visited Ethiopia this week in hopes of making progress. Blinken arrives in neighboring Kenya on Tuesday.
Ethiopia on Thursday laid out conditions for talks with the TPLF, which has made major gains in recent weeks and not ruled out a march on the capital Addis Ababa.
The conditions include a halt to attacks, a TPLF withdrawal from the neighboring areas of Amhara and Afar, and recognition of the government's legitimacy, foreign ministry spokesman Dina Mufti told reporters.
The TPLF in turn is demanding that aid be let into Tigray. No aid has arrived by road since October 18, and 364 trucks are stuck in the capital of Afar waiting for authorization, according to the United Nations.
The world's best-known Tigrayan, World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said the UN agency could not send in medicine as Tigray was under an "effective blockade."
"People are dying because of lack of supplies," he told reporters in Geneva.
Ethiopian authorities have been accused in recent days of harassing or detaining Tigrayans who work for international organizations including the United Nations, drawing condemnation.
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