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The Russians face a delicate diplomatic problem in trying to gain a new client on the Horn of Africa. Too many gestures of friendship to Mengistu are bound to alienate Somalia, which Russia also supplies and which is being wooed out of the Russian orbit by promises of economic aid from Saudi Arabia. Apparently unbothered by such strategic complications, Mengistu is planning an all-out assault on Eritrea, led by a people's militia of 200,000 peasants equipped with cast-off American arms and trained—if that is the word —by a small cadre of Cuban advisers. They hope to whip enough "volunteers" into fighting trim to begin marching north in June before the onset of the rainy season. Griggs reports that long convoys are rolling through Addis Ababa carrying young recruits to a fetid training camp named Siga Meda, or "field of meat," west of the capital. It was formerly used for slaughtering goats, sheep and cattle for market.
* The territory is the last remnant of a huge French colonial empire in Africa that as recently as 1958 included 15 states. The others are all independent nations today. Troops of the fabled French Foreign Legion will stay on in Djibouti to help keep order. Reunion island and the Comoro island of Mayotte, both in the Indian Ocean, remain as overseas departments of France, with representatives in the National Assembly in Paris.