Addis Ababa

Bruce Thomas Hall, a retired utilities engineer and decorated World War II veteran, died of pneumonia Saturday at a Sebring, Fla., hospital. He was 88 and lived in Rodgers Forge. Bruce Thomas Hall, a retired utilities engineer and decorated World War II veteran, died of pneumonia Saturday at a Sebring, Fla., hospital. He was 88 and lived in Rodgers Forge. Born in Baltimore and raised on Edgemere Avenue in Park Heights, he was the son of a Baltimore and Ohio Railroad engineer and a homemaker.

WASHINGTON - Famine-racked Ethiopia might be facing the "greatest humanitarian crisis" of any nation, with more than 12 million people relying on food aid for survival, relief organizations say, a crisis likely to repeat itself every few years without a major infusion of outside assistance. But even though tens of thousands of young children are acutely malnourished, the United States and other donor nations must recognize that food alone won't solve the problem, the aid groups say. At least $1 billion a year, they insist, should be spent developing Ethiopia's shattered and chronically impoverished and backward agricultural and education systems.

JERUSALEM -- If Israel succeeds in carrying out an emergency airlift of Ethiopian Jews, it will have belatedly completed an operation that began amid great secrecy in 1984 but broke down when its existence became public knowledge.That first, secret airlift, beginning in November 1984, involved about 7,000 Ethiopian Jews who treked by foot to a transit camp in Sudan before being secretly flown to Israel, and initially to a heartfelt welcome.To Israel's consternation, Sudan halted the operation after Israeli officials disclosed its existence, embarrassing Ethiopia as well.

With the Cold War winding down, regional conflicts that once were viewed almost exclusively in the context of the East-West competition have lost their geo-political significance. As a result, for the first time in a generation the prospect of peace now beckons in the countries of the Third World, where civil strife has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives over the last two decades.The accord between Angolan rebels and that country's Marxist government, and the U.S.-brokered entry of rebels into the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa after the collapse of the military government there are but two examples of how quickly ancient conflicts can collapse once the big powers withdraw support.

Another byproduct of the Gorbachev abandonment of Soviet imperialism outside the Soviet Union is starting to take effect. Shorn of Soviet military aid, the Marxist empire of Ethiopia is dissolving. The State Department has ordered non-essential personnel and dependents out of Addis Ababa.Deprived of Soviet aid or foreign exchange, Ethiopia's army is seizing the available gasoline and food, so that the people starve and farmers cannot bring coffee to market. But that army is nonetheless ceasing to fight.

THE WALTERS ART GALLERY has made a substantial advance in the acquisition of 17 works of Ethiopian Christian art, most of which are now on public view. This complements its holdings in Armenian, Russian, Greek and early Italian Christian devotional art.This addition to the collection flows naturally from the Walters' xTC stunning introduction of Ethiopian religious art to Americans in its 1993 show, which fed its own interest and reputation, indirectly leading to this purchase and extended loan.

AFABET, Ethiopia -- At the end of Africa's longest and bloodiest war in modern times, Isaias Afwerki returned home Thursday to this rocky, sandy outpost near the Red Sea, the victorious leader of Eritrea, a province that has fought for independence for 30 years.But the Eritrean rebel chief's homecoming, in a khaki Land Cruiser driven through a bush border post in Sudan, was not the jubilant affair that could have been expected after the long struggle ending last month in the ouster of the government of President Mengistu Haile Mariam.

MEZABERT, Ethiopia -- Tsege Wolde Gebrial was 14 years old when she first crossed the border, a newlywed riding a mule beside her husband.Born Eritrean, Gebrial left her tiny hometown of Kinen to live with her husband in his hometown of Mezabert across the border in Ethiopia. At that time, Eritrea was still a region of Ethiopia.Thirty-three years later, Gebrial is separated from her hometown by more than five miles of rocky path. The two towns, Kinen and Mezabert, are preparing to attack one another in a conflict that threatens to tear apart two closely interwoven societies.

KHARTOUM, Sudan - Sudan has agreed to allow 3,500 African Union troops into war-ravaged western Darfur as a means of building confidence among civilians who, United Nations officials have repeatedly said, no longer trust their own government authorities. Among other things, the African Union monitors will be allowed to police the Sudanese police. The agreement represents the biggest step taken by this government to comply with the demands of the U.N. Security Council. Sudan is already under biting international pressure, most notably the threat of sanctions, should it fail to take steps to restore security in Darfur.

MOGADISHU, Somalia --The leader of the Islamists who now control most of southern Somalia accused the United States yesterday of orchestrating what he called a border incursion by hundreds of Ethiopian troops. "We want the whole world to know what's going on," Sheik Sharif Ahmed, chairman of the Islamic Courts Union, told reporters in the provincial town of Jowhar. "The United States is encouraging Ethiopia to take over the area." American officials said they were not involved in an incursion, and Ethiopian authorities denied the claims that several hundred of their soldiers had entered Somalia in the southwestern Gedo region yesterday morning.