Is al jazeera and these are the headlines democratic nominee joe biden has addressed the nation in his home state of delaware late on friday hes still not declaring victory but says he will eventually win the election biden is ahead in the key battleground states of pennsylvania georgia and snuff answer we both know tensions are high they can be high after a tough election one like weve had already remember we have to remain calm patient with the process work out as we count all the votes you know were proving again what weve through for 244 years in this country democracy works your vote will be counted i dont care how hard people try to stop it i will not let it happen. If the o. P. s parliament has approved a new interim government for the Northern RegionPrime Minister its ordered a military offensive in the area on wednesday after accusing the regions really in t. P. A left party of attacking government soldiers and accusation it denies ivory coast Opposition Leader and former Prime Minister has been arrested opposition candidates in the president ial election had been warned they could face charges of terrorism and life imprisonment for denouncing the result the Constitutional Court has extended a deadline for objections to last weekends election result. President Donald Trumps chief of staff mark meadows has tested positive for corona virus its unclear when he contract it virus or if he has any symptoms. Or theres the headline stay with us an aljazeera inside story is up next. Hes reshaped ethiopia and want to Nobel Peace Prize now are they often that is facing a leadership test as he starts an offensive against the take re region so just what are the causes of tension there and is ethiopia heading for civil war this is inside story. Hello and welcome to the program im homage to grays leaders have dominated ethiopias Ruling Coalition of ethnically based parties for decades but after all they admit became Prime Minister in 2018 they refused to join his single Party Alliance theyve also resisted his sweeping reforms and in september they went ahead with local elections defying obvious decision to suspend polls because of coronavirus he now says his patience has run out with a great hes ordered a military operation in the region after accusing the t p l f of attacking federal troops an accusation denied by the groups its feared the feud could lead to the breakup of ethiopia and the un is calling for deescalation of tensions in elise you reports. It was business as usual in the ethiopian capital but many here are on alert as an Armed Conflict simmers in the north of the country but to conduct and i say even yes i love me but were not people who fight and kill each other therefore i personally feel that the 2 great and federal governments should solve their differences through dialogue and negotiations and prioritize the interests of our nation. Under good cause creates a perfect opportunity for robbery our country needs peace im now sick of this in a very disgusting time im telling you the truth the Prime Minister met launched a military offensive in the northern Tigray Regional accusing the opposition led local government of attacking federal troops and looting their assets in the regions ruled by the to great Peoples Liberation front or t p l f yes the ghats today the apostate ethiopian has stabbed ethiopia what makes this attack one of the most shocking attacks is that is viewing the Ethiopian NationalDefense Forces as a foreign army i declare that we will do all we can to shame and destroy this force. Be declared a 6 month state of emergency integrate and shut down electricity phone and Internet Services there in a statement aired on to great t. V. A Regional Government spokesman accuses the Nobel Prize WinningPrime Minister of cowering the people of to grey into submission by force tensions between the 2 sides escalated in september went to gray went ahead with Regional Elections despite a ban from the federal government. Postpone the polls citing the coronavirus pandemic but the t. P. O. Of says he delayed them to stay in power. The t. P. L. F. Dominated if the opium politics were more than 3 decades and says abby squeezed him out of the federal government when he came to power in 2018. Analysts warn the conflict into gray could turn into a civil war. The stabilization and the fracturing of egypt is military is too great an office is based in too great they may not be loyal to the federal government in terms of its efforts to the. Leadership so this could lead to a. Crisis. And it could also use freighted of all of. The un has called on both sides to deescalate tensions and find a peaceful solution to the dispute the secretary general underlined the importance of stability for. The horn of africa a region with a long history of border conflicts and political unrest and they sue aljazeera. All right lets bring in our guests from london our alow a senior lecturer at Keele University and a horn of africa analyst from addis ababa is. The ethiopian minister in charge of democratization and also from london is martin clout a Senior Research fellow at the institute of commonwealth studies thank you all for joining us on the let me start with you today Prime Minister said that the federal military operations in the north have quote Clear Limited and achievable objectives where do things stand there now and what are those objectives zob loud and clear. We need to be aware of our Northern Command base has been very good about. 30 has been looted and our sort of starts around. Which is any clearer break or is that all of that with a rubber always or most of the law so were out of there to make sure that the roar of law is our politics. And. Law of the land which is of course is respected so the measure is me and then our us our 2nd objective is to make sure that our citizens living 0. Living there freely without the interference of that ability to military do so this is objectively and as a promise that has conceivably stipulated our military operation of us here is meant to achieve this 2 major objectives are all just how close is ethiopia to civil war right now. I think it to be easy in a state of signal are already. Well we have an ultimate confrontation between the federal Government Forces and forces that are loyal to the Regional Government the Regional Government that controls a lot of large swaths of territory a Regional Government that has sufficient resources and i missed in the country this is a civil war but just to address the points that it was making earlier that the government was forced into this this confrontation i mean to be quite honest we know that the right things are already on the wall d that what is coming in terms of the political confrontation between the 2 forces and the wanting to go i now is basically an extension of the one other diaby government has been prosecuting in places like the only reason why we have hes talking about other confrontation is because people left which runs the tickler region has an army its contorted its already good it has resources that allows it to defend itself but that the evidence very clearly shows that there has already been provoked at the military deployment on the border so if t. P. L. F. As if your government claiming now tried to loot for example the resources of the Northern Command its probably because its so thats what is coming and thats what it is and thats because there has been threats of use of force against martin so what are the reasons for the conflict and why has it escalated so much was the Tipping Point for all this the holding of the election. I think that was the immediate cause in a sense you cant hold an election in an area where the part of your country where the federal government says you cant hold that election that its illegitimate and if you go ahead with it its a direct challenge to the state but the perhaps even more directly when the federal government attempt to send a military commander to the north to take control of the army the to graemes basically told him to go home that he wasnt going to be allowed out but if you go a little bit further back that you see really this integration of the system of government it was brought about in 1901 when the grains took control of the Central Government and they brought about a system of ethnic federalism which basically left them controlling through a series of proxies all the various regions and the peoples of ethiopia and that gradually fell away until you get the election of Prime Minister and once that happened it open a pandoras d box and all sorts of ethnic tensions exploded that again i you were eager to jump in and respond to some what are well it said please go ahead. The way i want to. Correct that as its ongoing operation in todays very long. If one is too important whats happening its even what a sieve into a district a sense of the term care is there a museum a weight off and want to between 2 between people the Common People which is the case here this is a conflict between for the government that is trying to a point of law into going in iraq i mean to do that hes trying to to. Keep the good people of the great our way from the rest of the country by way of massacring looting banks and so on so this is not anywhere close of the civil war. This is not an extension of what is happening you know to me our somewhere as you know we are trying to make it here for democratic success against all odds the reform has brought about a number of challenges and as a country that has been out there looking for a democratic a possible democratic government we know what this brings about so. Whats whats happening in iran me out in the south this is an enormous challenge and the way we are responding to the challenge is we believe the right way to do like there is no this kind of attack are going to start on our military bases in order mia or in. The south so this is not close this is not an extension of whats happening in our army on the south and hes not a little in any way a civil war this is simply the diplomatic route again is this. Going to move by that by that appellate. Whenever our army makes its way in than a shower in some other part of the region now the people are coming out in mass and then well coming out and it shows that the people of the are not behind this. On out of the Northern Command bid it would be interesting its really interesting to hear that the minister responsible for democratization what he was just said. The pipe minister does all that the former governing e. P. Added if party and it created a new party that theres a lot of reflect existing fault lies in the country that does not reflect existing social cleavage is or the kind of predominant more sort of organizing and mobilization that exists in the country he changes the party in a baby rushed way in december of last year by in may he realized that there is no way that that party could we anything are example either competitive. So the Prime Minister uses the term because the emergency relation to corbett to postpone the election now after essentially eliminating every kind of. Powerful or for a middle political adversary within or b i which is the most significant region that eliminating the jailing everybody the Prime Minister is saying now we can go for elections in those militias just the case in which is quite a bit has not been as well been dealt with the numbers are going up more people are that so so you can see that the difference between these 2 forces is ultimately political is ideological its ideological in the sense that we have a Prime Minister that is determined to impose his own vision of the future on these european people he wants to make that youre going to agree again an idea which is opposed by a significant majority in that country and you have on the other hand people who are opposed to salvage it now in terms of t. P. Unless i have to say that the people left who was the architect of the kind of political settlement mismanaged the project they dishonored the project that it was a member of the party has been idle for the party for a long period of time he knows the situation the question is not so much that he p. L. S. Is here some kind of. Say but the why itself is very much a reflection of the ideological difference between the 2 actors and it should not have morphed into im a confrontation of this sort and the reason is that the government is giving is really not the real reason behind the one martin i want to take a step back here for a moment because the the to take im sorry i will get i will get back to us and have asked martin another question and ill give you a chance to respond i know you want to respond to martin and also to some what all is saying let me just ask martin this question 1st martin i want to take a step back as i was saying you know the to grants have held a great deal of power. Since 1991. Since Prime Minister abbay has come to power has he sidelined the t. P. I. Left or the to grand or has he just attempted to redistribute power among ethiopias various ethnic groups no i mean he has definitely sidelined the grains and they did they feel that i mean very much so but i mean you know there was a very good point made by one of my colleagues and he said that the governments argument this is a just war comes down to a very specific claim that ethnic conflict and Political Violence since april 2018 has occurred because the t. P. O. Left that he grans have planned and executed it to win this argument concrete evidence will have to be made public and that is really at the heart of what theyre having to show if they believe if the Prime Minister of be believes that there is direct evidence that the grounds have been behind every single one of the problems that they have been across the country let him show it one more challenge list let the ethiopians and the to grans allow reporters independent reporters both from the from ethiopia and from the International Community to go up to the front lines and witness whats going on for themselves and end the cutting off of telecommunications the to great let information flow then will begin to know whats really going on are exotic please go ahead i know you want to jump in before heres your chance to respond. Ok i want to 1st 2nd what i would have said you know if you had only if i were you saying that the Prosperity Party the new established party which is a continual practice in some sense is established by the Prime Minister this is very wrong the prime this is part and parcel of the effort to was there effort to change paris into Prosperity Party so its not only the Prime Ministers vision it is a ship to be in among the rank and file of the Prosperity Party and i will said the difference between developed and Prosperity Party is that a radical difference thats very wrong is attacking our Northern Command is that starting our soldiers and i dont recall differences can never be the case it is simply an attempt by the terrorist group to impose its will on the on the on our military base which ajax it is call it time and they can call to do it in a sort of this sense. And Prosperity Party is established in a way that allegations that the problems here the problems in the country its aware of the fault lines and and ended the way our program is designed to be in a way the soles of our long standing problems if you care to this program would mean to solve our longstanding problems you could have solved what we are seeing is a part because if you had this didnt solve our problems it simply wasnt or post 20 some other time and. A little i would also said that there lection was the election was postponed. For the wrong reason thats thats been dont you know 50 plus countries have passed one the election due to copy 19 indeed it was not our will we want to go out with their action and compete compete openly but it is up to the National International travel to do saw the National Product board failed because it ethiopia is not ready for election so we were a force that we were part of the members of this parties who said. Who oppose the decision of the National Power war you know naturally what i want is chaired by bill to them dexter and no one opposition figure and nobody can cost is their credibility and this is the more credible than any of us so. This is not our will this is the we of the national i look at our boat and we were mean to accept it and now you know coffee has become a way of life you dont have a proof that it will go away someday we will never nobody has to prove that it would be able to get them back anytime soon so we cannot postp