Ethiopia: The West’s Diplomats Meet in Secret to Decide How to Help the TPLF

Former ambassadors and current diplomats for the United States, Britain and EU had a Zoom meeting this past Sunday to encourage and try to help the TPLF, and there’s evidence to prove it: a secret phone-cam video of the two-hour meeting.

“I hope that you’ll have military success fairly soon, because it seems as if the situation is only becoming more drastic,” said Vicki Huddleston, who was Chargé d’Affairs ad interim in Ethiopia during years the TPLF were in power.

France’s retired diplomat and writer Stéphane Gompertz openly speculated on the potential for Abiy to be forced from power. “Even if Abiy sticks to his guns, which unfortunately he seems to be doing, you either hope that people around him either in government or in the military realize that this is going nowhere and might force him to, well, accept the cessation of hostilities or force him to step down?”

The Western powers—Britain, the EU and especially the United States—have been posturing for months that they have not taken sides in the conflict and are pushing negotiations only in the interests of peace.

But the Zoom talk rips away the façade, revealing a chummy circle of foreign policy elite, both retired and still active who mostly know each other and are in sympathy with TPLF objectives. They include Donald Yamamoto, one of the U.S. government’s most senior Africa experts who serves as the current American ambassador to Somalia, and Spain’s diplomat Carmen de la Peña.

Donald Yamamoto: “Abiy is not listening… Obasanjo has not been extraordinary helpful or very active, and so are there any other opportunities that you see?”

Former EU ambassador to Ethiopia Tim Clarke admitted that all of the attendants “maintain contacts with our former employees. Just the other day I was talking to the existing EU ambassador to Ethiopia.”

Others who attended included former British ambassador Robert Dewar and one of Finland’s top former ambassadors, Kirsti Aarnio. It’s unclear how many other Western diplomats were online, or for that matter, how many of these secret consultations they have had with the TPLF while feigning neutrality to the world.

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