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In Brussels, NATO Secretary-General Joseph Luns said that by sending C-141s to Zaïre, Washington "was not carrying the baby but was pushing the pram." Somewhat more prosaically, White House officials conceded that the limited U.S. assistance to Zaïre was a signal that the U.S. was indeed prepared 1) to help threatened friends, and 2) to make life a little more difficult for Cuba's soldiers of fortune in Africa. In Havana, President Fidel Castro summoned Chief of the U.S. Mission Lyle F. Lane to his office to insist that Cubans were not involved in the Shaba incursion. Washington was skeptical. Said one high official, referring to Cuban involvement not only in Zaïre but in Angola, Ethiopia and other African nations: "There is evidence that the Cubans are getting somewhat more brazen about their participation in these things."
Shaba was not the only part of Africa where the Cubans had an impact last week. In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian Strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam announced that his forces had launched their long-awaited offensive against two liberation groups that control most of Eritrea Province, with attacks around Asmara and along the Red Sea coast. The Cuban role in this conflict was unclear. Both Eritrean spokesmen and Colonel Mengistu indicated that Cuban soldiers were taking part in the offensive, although Mengistu did not specifically state that they were involved in the fighting—as they had been in Ethiopia's recent battles against Somali rebels in the Ogaden region. In Tanzania, Cuban diplomats insisted that their country's forces were not involved militarily in Eritrea. Havana's representatives said they were trying to convince Mengistu that the Eritrean problem could not be solved militarily and that he ought to work out some degree of autonomy for the province, since he and the secessionists share a common Marxist ideology.
Conceivably, the Cubans were trying to make the best of an embarrassing situation. Before the overthrow of Emperor Haile Selassie in 1974, Havana had supported and trained the Eritreans. But after the Marxists took power in Ethiopia, both the Cubans and the Soviet Union abruptly abandoned the Eritreans in order to back a stronger revolutionary group.