SECTION: THE WORLD; INTERNATIONAL; Pg. 62

HEADLINE: Horn of Africa; Everybody's war

BODY:
   The Somalis and the Eritrean rebel movements are convinced that Ethiopia is about to strike back on both of its war fronts.
This week there were signs that these counter-offensives were brewing up. On the Ogaden from Ethiopian forces drove
Somali insurgents out of the city of Harar, whose walled defences they had breached two weeks earlier. The assault was
preceded by accurate day and night air raids on the Somalis' positions; the unusual proficiency of the pilots could mean that
they were Russians or Cubans: Ethiopian pilots could not have mastered the unfamiliar aircraft this quicly.

Ethiopia's newly acquired Mig fighters were also in action in Eritrea.  According to a western eye-witness, the air raids there are destroying many villages and terrifying the population. The efforts of the guerrilla movements to get life back to normal in the province, which is almost entirely under their control apart from the cities of Asmara and Massawa, are being hampered by the air attacks.

If the Ethiopians' attempt to regain control of the Ogaden region is to succeed, it must be launched before the "small rains"
which are due in a few weeks. There are reports that 40,000 regular soldiers and 48,000 militiamen are being mobilised for the
battle. Colonel Megistu, Ethiopia's ruler - accompaned by a person thought to be Raul Castro, the Cuban defence minister and
brother of Fidel - toured the front lines last week. They narowly escaped death when a bomb thrown at their car near Harar
killed some Cuban guards.

On his return to Addis Ababa Colonel Mengistu lashed out at Iran, Saudi Arabia and other Moslem countries for planning to
intervene on the side of the "aggressor" Somalis, and accused the United States of co-ordinating an "imperialist plot" against
Ethiopia with its Nato allies. At a vast, orchestrated rally in the capital on Wednesday Colonel Mengistu secured "approval"
from the crowds for a strong protest to the United States, Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Iran and Saudi Arabia for
supporting an "unjust war" against Ethiopia.

The five western powers had conferred in Washington on January 21st and decided not to respond to pressure, particularly
from moderate Arab states, for a direct western military intervention in the Horn of Africa. They endorsed the American
position: no arms for either Ethiopia or Somalia; pressure on the Organisation of African Unity to provide an "African solution";
appeals to the Ethiopian and Somali governments to negotiate. The responses to these appeals havbeen negative. Somalia's
President Siad Barre rejects negotiations as long as the Russians are in Ethiopia: Colonel Mengistu insists on a total Somali
withdrawal from the Ogaden first. None of this is of any comfort to the states which see the Russian and Cuban presence in the
Red Sea area as a threat to themselves.

That presence keeps growing. The number of Russian and Cuban troops in Ethiopia is said to have doubled during the past
month. The first hard evidence that the Cubans have been in action came when the Somalis produced a captured Cuban soldier
last week. He said he was carlos Orlando, a conscripted 20-year-old Havana university graduate who had been with a Cuban
artillery unit near Harar for a month.

The Arab League has warned its members that events in the Horn "not only jeopardise the security of Somalia but have serious
implications for the whole Arab world, the African continent and world peace." Egypt's President Sadat has gone farther. He
has let it be known that he has already sent Somalia $30m worth of arms, mostly obsolete Soviet weapons, and would send an
Egyptian armoured brigade if the Ogaden counter-offensive were carred into Somalia. President Siad Barre has has a pledge of military assistance from Iran and all sorts of promises from Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile he is buying what arms he can on the open market, helped, no doubt, by a hurred no-string-attached loan of $12m from West Germany. That loan has got the German ambassador expelled from Ethiopia.
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