Word: mengistu
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...with the hammer and sickle. Honecker was in the Ethiopian capital with Soviet Politburo Member Grigory Romanov at a three-hour parade to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the military coup that overthrew former Emperor Haile Selassie. Dominating the scene was a towering portrait of Ethiopian Leader Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, 43, the U.S.-trained soldier who had just been chosen Secretary-General of the Workers Party of Ethiopia, the newly inaugurated Communist party...
...reward to Mengistu for bringing Ethiopia into the Communist fold, Moscow has signed a new economic agreement with Ethiopia. Apparently, though, it will not pay the bill for all of the attendant celebrations: a reported $250 million...
Independence, paradoxically, has not freed most of Africa from the yoke of foreign domination and meddling. Cuban soldiers act as proxies for the Soviet Union in Angola and Ethiopia; East German military advisers are present in Mozambique and Ethiopia. The regime of Ethiopian Chairman Mengistu Haile Mariam has paid homage to Moscow by erecting a statue of Lenin in Addis Ababa. Mengistu allows the Soviets to maintain a naval base on the Dahlak Islands in the Red Sea. Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, often with Moscow's backing, has emerged as the continent's chief troublemaker. Gaddafi...
Reminded of the horrors of the 1973 drought, which helped to bring down Emperor Haile Selassie, the Marxist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam has succeeded in keeping casualties down by activating a relief commission that has already resettled some 10,000 victims and reforested remote, soil-eroded areas. But such efforts can create new problems: for example, after being uprooted, people without an inborn immunity to malaria often prove more vulnerable to the disease. Meanwhile, international relief agencies charge that supplies are falling into the hands of government troops instead of beleaguered civilians. The rains that finally began last month...
Despite such failures, Mengistu remains committed to Communist models of development. Hopes that Mengistu's election as chairman of the 50-member Organization of African Unity during its meeting in Addis Ababa last month might moderate his stance have already been dashed. Less than a week after his designation, Mengistu appeared under a hammer-and-sickle emblem to condemn "Western opposition to socialism" as "the main threat to world peace." It was enough to convince even those who are skeptical of the durability of the Soviet link of exactly where Mengistu intends to steer Ethiopia...