EU envoy says Ethiopia’s leaders told him that ‘they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans,’ but Ethiopia denies it

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A European Union envoy says Ethiopia’s leaders told him in closed-door talks earlier this year that “they are going to wipe out the Tigrayans for 100 years.” The envoy, Pekka Haavisto, Finland’s foreign minister, says such an aim “looks for us like ethnic cleansing.” Haavisto spoke in a question-and-answer session Tuesday with a European Parliament committee. Ethiopia’s prime minister and other key ministers were involved in the talks with him in February. Ethiopia’s foreign ministry has dismissed Haavisto’s comments as “ludicrous” and a “hallucination of sorts or a lapse in memory of some kind.”