Issayas Afewerki

The tension provides a welcome distraction for President Issayas Aferworki: 18 September is the second anniversary of the arrest of eleven Central Committee members who accused him of dictatorial tendencies...

Anti-Eritrean feeling remains high along the border area reinforced by the presence among others of 4 000 Kunama people who fled Eritrea at the end of the war unjustly accused by President Issayas Aferworki who needed a scapegoat for the Eritrean defeat of betraying the Eritrean armed forces in the final Ethiopian offensive...

Meles might not survive if Badme centre of the 1998-2000 war were handed to Eritrea whose President Issayas Aferworki equally set on the town has offered bases to the United States - which declines to accept them because two US Embassy local employees have been detained without charge since 2001...

Internal and external support for President Issayas Aferworki will weaken further...

Despite sanctions by the European Union and other donors for bad governance harsh treatment of political prisoners and tight controls on the press President Issayas Aferworki shows no sign of yielding...

President Issayas Aferworki demands that Eritrea take over the TSZ immediately to bring back people displaced from the zone by the fighting; UNMEE and Ethiopia want the TSZ to remain until the border is decided...

The six-week delay until 13 April in the United Nations' verdict on the border dispute with Ethiopia may have further damaged the economy but by keeping the country on a war-footing it has given President Issayas Aferworki's regime more time to fend off his critics block any investigation of the conduct of the war and consolidate his group's hold on power...

Problems in the ruling People's Front for Democracy and Justice including the arrest of eleven Central Committee members in September gave President Issayas Aferworki the excuse he wanted to postpone December's elections...

Yet Ethiopia fears that Eritrea's President Issayas Aferworki will manufacture a crisis to distract attention from his regime's internal problems...

For example Eritrea has promised US Air Force planes refuelling rights; presumably Asmara hopes that Washington's criticism of President Issayas Aferworki's crackdown will remain muted...

They included Ethiopia's Meles Zenawi Eritrea's Issayas Afewerki and Uganda's Yoweri Museveni...