{"id":179647,"date":"2026-10-24T09:52:55","date_gmt":"2026-10-24T13:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/?p=179647"},"modified":"2026-10-24T13:58:47","modified_gmt":"2026-10-24T17:58:47","slug":"eritrea-calls-getachew-reda-a-liar-busy-agitating-for-war-after-his-bahir-dar-forum-remarks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zegabi.com\/articles\/179647","title":{"rendered":"Eritrea Calls Getachew Reda a Liar \u201cBusy Agitating for War\u201d After His Bahir Dar Forum Remarks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Getachew<\/p>\n

Getachew Reda at a press conference in September 2023, when he was president of the Tigray Interim Administration. [file photo] [Voice of America Tigrigna, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons]<\/em><\/p>\n

Eritrea\u2019s Ministry of Information on Saturday accused Getachew Reda, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed\u2019s adviser on East African affairs, of \u201cputting forward false narratives and accusations\u201d and being \u201cbusy agitating for war,\u201d a day after he told a security forum in Bahir Dar that Eritrea keeps fomenting crisis in the region and, according to one account of the panel, set out what Asmara would have to do before any talks.<\/p>\n

The attack came in a long Tigrigna article posted early on Saturday on the ministry\u2019s website, Shabait, and on its X account under the title \u201c\u1213\u1233\u12cd\u1295 \u1248\u122d\u1260\u1275\u1295 \u12a5\u1293\u1213\u12f0\u1228 \u12ed\u1348\u12b5\u1235!\u201d an Eritrean saying that means a liar, like a drying hide, gets lighter with every night that passes. Information Minister Yemane Gebremeskel shared it about an hour later, writing that Getachew \u201c\u12c8\u130d\u1210-\u1338\u1265\u1210 \u1293\u12ed \u1213\u1236\u1275 \u1275\u1228\u12bb\u1273\u1275\u1295 \u12ad\u1235\u1273\u1275\u1295 \u12a5\u1293\u1348\u1265\u1228\u12b8\u1361 \u12a3\u1295\u133b\u122d \u12a4\u122d\u1275\u122b \u1293\u12ed \u1213\u1236\u1275 \u12d8\u1218\u1270 \u1265\u121d\u12ad\u12eb\u12f5 \u1295\u12b2\u1293\u1275 \u12a3\u1265 \u121d\u1309\u1235\u1313\u1235 \u1270\u1338\u121a\u12f1 \u12d8\u120e\u201d (\u201cmorning and evening fabricates false narratives and accusations, wages a campaign of lies against Eritrea and is busy agitating for war\u201d) and calling him \u201ca cheap man\u201d who \u201cchanges like the seasons and the months.\u201d The ministry said Getachew had swung \u201cfrom one extreme to the opposite extreme\u201d over the past three years, and to make its point it printed a list of insults it said he had once aimed at Abiy, without saying when or where he made them. In one, the prime minister is \u201ca political dwarf, a dwarf in everything\u201d; in another, Getachew says that sitting down to talk with a government led by Abiy, for any reason, would be \u201cthe shame of shames.\u201d The article ended by saying that his \u201cpresent masters\u201d would use him for a while and then throw him away.<\/p>\n

Getachew spoke on Friday at the Special Envoys\u2019 Dialogue of the Tana High-Level Forum on Security in Africa, which Ethiopia is hosting in Bahir Dar, the capital of the Amhara region, from Oct. 23 to 25, on a panel with the UN Secretary-General\u2019s envoys for the Horn of Africa and for Sudan and with the French and German envoys to the region. The Ethiopian News Agency reported that he singled out Eritrea for \u201crecalcitrant behavior\u201d and for continuing to \u201cfoment crisis,\u201d said the government wants to settle conflicts through dialogue, pointing to the Pretoria agreement, and urged the international community to separate Ethiopia\u2019s internal peace efforts from the need to confront outside forces fueling instability, including in Sudan and Somalia. Al Jazeera, in a video posted on Saturday, said he told reporters at the forum that Tigrayan forces and regional actors were blocking the Pretoria Agreement.<\/p>\n

Kulu Media reported that Getachew laid out three conditions for talks with Asmara. Eritrea would have to publicly renounce support for armed groups fighting the Ethiopian Government, pull its troops out of what he called sovereign Ethiopian territory, and say it was willing to settle disputes by peaceful means. According to Kulu Media, he said Eritrean forces still hold places he named as Aiga and Dalera, said he doubted Isaias Afwerki\u2019s government would accept the conditions, and questioned whether the TPLF was still organized enough to negotiate at all, saying many of its senior leaders were in Eritrea or hiding near the border. Zegabi has not seen the full video of the panel, and none of these claims could be checked independently.<\/p>\n

A day earlier, at a defense college forum in Addis Ababa, Getachew said the Ethiopian army was five kilometers from the Eritrean border and that, if fighting broke out, \u201cit takes a very short time to enter Asmara,\u201d Ethiopia Insider reported.<\/p>\n

Asmara has also answered the substance. In a separate statement posted by the Information Ministry on Saturday and signed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with the date Oct. 21, Eritrea said its sovereignty is \u201cabsolute and inviolable\u201d and that it \u201cwill not make concessions or hold talks over its sovereignty under any circumstances, through preconditions or violent intimidation.\u201d It said the Eritrean Defence Forces \u201care within the internationally recognized borders of the State of Eritrea,\u201d called the charge that Eritrea had invaded Ethiopia \u201cfabricated,\u201d and said Ethiopian claims of Eritrean troops on Ethiopian soil in fact point to land that the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission awarded to Eritrea on April 13, 2002. The statement blamed the crisis in the Horn of Africa on what it called the Prosperity regime and Ethiopia\u2019s ruling Prosperity Party, and said international calls for \u201call parties\u201d or \u201cboth countries\u201d to calm things down wrongly put the two governments on the same level.<\/p>\n

Getachew, a former president of the Tigray Interim Administration, posted on X early on Saturday that he was in Bahir Dar taking part in the forum. By 9:45 a.m. ET he had not replied to the Eritrean article, and Zegabi had not found a response from the Ethiopian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.<\/p>\n

On X, reaction split along familiar lines, and none of the claims could be checked. Getachew had said the TPLF received half a million dollars from Egypt, Afro Insight News reported, and Ambassador Estifanos (@AmbassadorEstif<\/a>), Eritrea\u2019s ambassador to Japan, wrote that Getachew had \u201cclaimed, before few days publicly, to have received USD 500,000 from sources in Egypt\u201d and called it \u201can amazing confession indeed.\u201d Okubay Berhe (@OkubayBerhe<\/a>) wrote in English that Getachew \u201cclaims that the relationship between Tigray and Eritrea has collapsed. On the other hand, he accuses Eritrea of supporting the TPLF. These statements contradict each other.\u201d Translations from Tigrigna are Zegabi\u2019s. Zegabi has not verified the claims made in these posts.<\/p>\n

Sources<\/strong><\/p>\n