A small staff remaining at the Israeli Embassy in Addis Ababa is racing against time to prepare visas for about 17,000 Jews waiting to immigrate to Israel.
Israeli officials believe the days are numbered for the regime of President Mengistu Haile Mariam, whose embattled army has suffered heavy losses in recent weeks to rebel forces.
The rebels have captured the town of Ambo, 75 miles from Addis Ababa, and are reported to be closing in on the capital. They are already said to control half the country.
There is no telling how a rebel victory would affect the departure of the country’s remaining Jews or Ethiopia’s relations with Israel.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry has already called home most of its embassy staff and Jewish Agency emissaries. It has ordered Israeli citizens whose presence there is not essential to leave Ethiopia immediately.
Despite the turmoil, Ethiopian aliyah continues at the normal rate, according to Jewish Agency sources here. They expect about 250 immigrants to arrive on two flights at the end of this week.
The flow of Ethiopian Jews has been between 500 and 1,000 a month since January. There was a two-week interruption in March, attributed to an attempt by Mengistu to extract more weapons from Israel, though the Foreign Ministry and the Ethiopian authorities denied the allegation.
But the Bush administration apparently believes Mengistu controls the rate of departure of Jews from Ethiopia. Yediot Achronot said Sunday that Washington was ready to offer him political asylum in exchange for speeding up the departure of all Jews.
The White House announced April 24 that President Bush was sending Rudy Boschwitz, a former Republican senator from Minnesota, to Addis Ababa as his “personal emissary.”
Boschwitz, accompanied by three administration officials, arrived in Addis Ababa over the weekend. According to the White House, his mission was to discuss the plight of Ethiopian Jews with Mengistu and possible solutions to the country’s quarter-century-old civil war.
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