KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) Eritrea has been excluded from East Africa’s main soccer tournament this month because of political tensions with host Ethiopia.

Nicholas Musonye, secretary general of the Council for East and Central African Football Associations, says the regional soccer body ”must respect” Ethiopia’s position not to allow the Eritrea team into the country to play at the CECAFA Cup from Nov. 21-Dec. 6.

The neighbors were at war between 1998 and 2000.

Eritrean players have also frequently used soccer trips to try to escape their restrictive homeland.

A group of 15 Eritrean players and a team doctor went missing and claimed political asylum at the 2012 CECAFA Cup in Uganda. Last month, 10 were granted asylum in Botswana having refused to return home following a World Cup qualifier.

Editor’s Note – Ethiopia has barred Eritrea from taking part in a regional soccer tournament to be held in Addis. Why? The regime in Addis knows very well that most, if not all, Eritrean soccer players will defect. So what? What is EPRDF trying to tell the world? Is it saying we have enough Eritrean refugees and we cannot take in even a dozen more? Or it wants to save the Isaias regime another round of humiliation after the Botswana debacle? We couldn’t make head or tail of the story. After all, Ethiopia is home to arguably over a million Eritrean residents and refugees, and if push comes to shove, there is no more Eritrean than the upper echelon of the TPLF regime.