Ethiopia orders an Egyptian diplomat out within 48 hours as it shuts the Asmara embassy

Ethiopia has ordered an Egyptian diplomat to leave the country within 48 hours and declared him persona non grata, the state-run Ethiopian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Thursday. Two sources with knowledge of the order confirmed it to Reuters. Egypt's foreign ministry had not responded when the report was filed. The diplomat was not named.

The order landed on the same day Ethiopia closed its own embassy in Asmara and told 10 Eritrean diplomats to leave within 48 hours. Eritrea answered by cutting diplomatic ties. The Egyptian case is separate from that break, and it is smaller: one named post, not an embassy. It is also the first public mark against Cairo in a week when Addis Ababa has accused Egypt, along with Eritrea and Sudan, of backing a TPLF-led alliance fighting federal troops in the north.

Persona non grata is a formal status under the Vienna Convention. The receiving state does not have to give a reason. The sending state is expected to withdraw the person or see the accreditation end. A 48-hour clock is short. It is the same clock Ethiopia set for the 10 Eritrean diplomats, which suggests a single decision taken on Thursday morning rather than two unrelated files. The Egyptian diplomat's rank was not in the EBC report. A defence attaché and a political counsellor imply different accusations. Until a name and a rank appear, the order is a signal to Cairo more than a case against a person.

The night before the order, blasts were heard in Addis Ababa. Diplomatic sources described them to Reuters. The government has not published a casualty count from those blasts, and it has not said they were the cause of the expulsion. What it has said, in the Eritrea file, is that Asmara has carried out direct and indirect acts of hostility. The Egyptian order came without a matching public sentence. State media carried the status and the deadline. They did not carry a charge.

Egypt's stake in Ethiopia is the Nile. The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, filled over several seasons, is the dispute Cairo has treated as existential for downstream water. Diplomatic relations have stayed open through that dispute. Expelling a diplomat does not close the embassy in Addis Ababa and does not stop talks on the dam. It does tell Cairo that Addis Ababa is willing to thin the mission while fighting continues in Tigray and while it is already emptying the Eritrean mission. If Egypt replies in kind, one Ethiopian diplomat in Cairo will be on a matching clock. If it does not, the 48 hours expire with the file still one-sided.

Three moves now sit on the same date. The Asmara embassy is shut. Ten Eritrean diplomats are under a leaving order. One Egyptian diplomat is under the same order, unnamed, with no comment yet from his ministry. The Tigray fighting is the context Addis Ababa has offered for the first two. It has not yet offered a sentence for the third. The 48-hour deadline will arrive before that sentence does, unless Cairo or the EBC speaks first.