Addis Ababa, Ethiopia — Ethiopia's ruling coalition Friday announced that it had reprimanded dissidents within the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) for breaching party rules which it claimed "endangered the unity of the front."

TPLF is senior partner in a four-party coalition of the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF).

The charges labelled against the unnamed "dissidents" were serious enough to warrant a four-day gathering of the general council of the EPRDF which issued a statement on the outcome Friday.

It censured the "dissident group" for walking out of TPLF central committee meeting, rather than "explaining" their differences with the others, when asked to do so.

The walkout came when the central committee rejected the dissident group's "impossible procedural preconditions," the statement said.

What the ruling party considers as "party indiscipline," however, had been blamed by the speculative public at large and the private press as "serious division" within the country's leadership, paralysing the activities of the federal government and that of the Tigray regional state in northern Ethiopia bordering with Eritrea, where the TPLF is the sole political entity and ruling party.

However, the statement did not disclose what the "procedural preconditions" of the dissident group were, nor made public the names of the TPLF leadership involved.

The ruling party disclosed the reprimand as it was actively engaged in preparations for the 10th anniversary of its ascendancy to power in May 1991.

This was the first serious rift within the leadership of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi' ruling party since 1991 soon after consolidating its power recently with two national and regional multi-party elections.

The private press, however, has been awash with speculation on the "rifts" within the ruling party during the past three weeks, saying that 12 TPLF central committee members, five of them in the politburo, were "illegally sacked" from their party leadership posts.

The press reported that their "offence" was "a demand for general debate of the party on crucial issues to the TPLF, the EPRDF and the country as a whole."

However, the press reported that Meles, chairman of the TPLF, and his supporters, allegedly opposed these demands.

Their source of information was a paper the "dissident group" reportedly circulated to members of the TPLF, demanding the convening of the congress of the party for urgent deliberations of the "crucial issues."