Word: ababa
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Democratic Front's saunter into Addis Ababa was not really part of anyone's plan, including the rebels'. Early last week the organization -- along with guerrilla groups representing Eritrean and Oromo rebels -- met with officials of the teetering central government for U.S.-brokered peace talks in London. The negotiations were made urgent by rebel pushes that put the Democratic Front just outside the capital and the Eritreans in command of all of Eritrea province. These advances prompted Mengistu to flee to Zimbabwe two weeks ago. After just a day, the parties were on the verge of agreeing to a cease...
...before the deal could be signed and implemented, the regime of Mengistu's handpicked successor, Tesfaye Gebre-Kidan, imploded. Government troops turned on one another. Soldiers wantonly looted state property. Desperate, Tesfaye summoned Robert Houdek, the U.S. charge d'affaires in Addis Ababa, to tell him he could no longer control the situation. The interim Ethiopian leader promised he would issue a unilateral cease-fire and tell the people of the capital to welcome the rebels into the city...
Tesfaye never followed through on his second pledge, but he did proclaim a cease-fire before seeking asylum at the Italian embassy. At that point, Herman Cohen, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, announced in London that the U.S. was "recommending" that the Democratic Front enter Addis Ababa quickly "to stabilize the situation." The front obliged...
Cohen's encouragement of the group's takeover made the U.S. the target of much of the animosity vented in Addis Ababa last week. Expecting to get a negotiated coalition government, many residents were furious to get instead a junta composed only of the Democratic Front. Resentments were further aggravated when Cohen announced that Washington supported the Eritreans' right to self-determination. Mobs marched to the gates of the U.S. embassy, shouting anti-American slogans and hurling stones into the compound. Protesters dubbed the change of government "Cohen's coup...
...free market, as have the Eritreans, who also once claimed allegiance to a quasi-socialism. But the policy statements of the Democratic Front, formed in 1988, still contain hints of old orthodoxy. Moreover, the moves the organization has made toward moderation are largely unknown to the citizens of Addis Ababa, who still tend to think of the Tigrean-led front as a group that out-Marxed Mengistu, whose own policies left the population impoverished...