ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi denied reports saying that Ethiopian government Woyanne has agreed to hold peace talks with the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) without preconditions
“There are no started, ongoing or planned talks with OLF” Meles replied to a question raised from opposition MPs in parliament on Thursday.
Despite his denial a mediation team drawn from Oromo elders recently said that they have met the Prime Minister dictator in person and he told them that his country is ready to hold talks with the group without any preconditions.
But Meles agreed that there were many elders that demanded and given permission and support from government in an effort to convince the group to come to a peaceful, democratic and legal way of struggle, which he said the efforts didn’t seem to work out so far.
“Ethiopia Woyanne welcomes any political group at home or abroad for peace talks but only on one condition,” said Prime Minister Zenawi.
“That body has first to agree to accept, respect and safe-guard the nation’s constitution” he said. He further added “OLF in a clear and concrete words didn’t yet assured us that it accepts Ethiopia’s Woyanne’s constitution.”
“As far as this stand is not changed negotiation with OLF or any other group is impossible. No body can change, improve or negotiate over the constitution,” he stressed.
Ethiopian government Woyanne considers the group as a “terror group” and holds it responsible for different bomb attacks including to the latest bomb blast that blew a town minibus near the ministry of foreign affairs.
– Sudan Tribune
Mogadishu, Somalia (APA) – Ethiopian Woyanne troops have killed 12 civilians late on Friday in southern Somalia, following an ambush on their convoy by Islamist insurgents, residents said here.
Islamist fighters, opposed to the presence of the Ethiopian Woyanne soldiers in Somalia in support of the interim government, ambushed a convoy of Ethiopian Woyanne forces in a village 50 kilometres north of Wanlaweyn on Friday, triggering an exchange of mortar bombs and machine gun fire.
“After the fighting, the Ethiopian Woyanne troops moved into a nearby village called Kabaherig, where they were alleged to have killed 12 civilians at a water well,” said resident Mayow Osman.
It is not clear whether any of the Ethiopian soldiers or the insurgents were killed in the attack.
Islamist spokesman Abdirahim Issa Adow has accused the Ethiopians Woyanne of retaliating on the civilians whenever they are attacked by the insurgents. “The enemy troops mercilessly killed civilians after we attacked them because they treat all Somalis the same,” Adow said, adding; “They are always known to react like that.”
“We will carry on fighting the Ethiopian Woyanne until they leave our country,” he added.
“It was the worst thing we have ever seen in our life, we had to flee the village because the disgruntled Ethiopian Woyanne troops moved into our residences,” said an eyewitness Mohamed Ali Diriye. “When we came back we discovered the dead bodies of 12 of the villagers. We are now burying them.”
Nairobi, Kampala – A Ugandan government official on Friday confirmed that the African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia will pull out should the Woyanne regime in Ethiopia stick to its promise of withdrawing its troops before the end of the year.
‘If the Ethiopians Woyannes pull out … the AU force will pull out because it will not have adequate numbers,’ James Mugume, permanent secretary at the Ugandan Foreign Ministry, told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.
The Ethiopian Woyanne government in late November said it would extract its several thousand soldiers unconditionally by the end of the year.
Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi on Thursday broke the news that the AU force would also leave and promised to help the Ugandan and Burundian peacekeepers, numbering around 3,000, to pull out.
Ethiopian Woyanne forces invaded in 2006 to help kick out the Islamic Courts’ Union (ICU) – a hardline Islamist regime that was in power for six months.
A bloody insurgency in Southern and Central Somalia then kicked off in early 2007.
Aid agencies say around 10,000 civilians have died and over 1 million have fled as al-Shabaab, a militant splinter group of the ICU, has made huge gains.
The insurgent group is now perched on the edge of Mogadishu and is on the verge of over-running the squabbling and ineffective Transitional Federal Government.
Should both Ethiopia Woyanne and Uganda leave, the only force standing between the insurgents and victory would be a collection of pro- government armed militia and poorly trained recruits.
A report by the UN monitoring group on Somalia, released Thursday, said that 80 per cent of Somalia’s soldiers and police – some 15,000 – had deserted or defected, often taking their weapons and vehicles with them.
The AU’s top diplomat, Jean Ping, said Friday that he hoped the Ugandan and Burundian forces could be persuaded to stay.
Mugume, however, said that the AU force would only remain in Somalia if long-standing calls for a UN peacekeeping force to be deployed were answered.
‘If the Ethiopians Woyannes are replaced by other troops like UN peacekeepers, a number of about 8,000, we will stay,’ he said.
However, the UN has appeared reluctant to deploy and analysts say this is unlikely to change.
‘I don’t think there is a realistic prospect for substitute troops,’ Roger Middleton, Horn of Africa analyst at London-based think tank Chatham House, told dpa.
The AU force was supposed to have been much larger, but many nations have failed to meet their commitments. As a result, the AU force is undermanned and overwhelmed.
Ping said that he had asked other African countries to contribute troops to bring the AU force up to the full complement of 8,000 originally envisaged.
‘If the Ugandans stayed … they would become greater targets,’ he said. ‘Even if they stayed, I don’t think they would have a stabilizing impact. Their force is tiny and can’t even secure (Mogadishu) airport.’
Hardline Islamists have refused to talk peace unless the Ethiopian Woyannes first left Somalia, but it is not clear if they will now come to the table or continue to advance.
Al-Shabaab has already rejected a peace deal agreed between moderate opposition figures and the government.
There are fears that in the absence of the common enemy, the Ethiopian Woyannes, the insurgent groups will splinter and begin fighting, creating more chaos.
However, Middleton said that the worst-case scenario would be that al-Shabaab remained united and decided to finish off the government.
‘The scariest scenario is that al-Shabaab holds together … and we see an al-Shabaab regime with the attended radicalization of the population.’
The US says that al-Shabaab has links to al-Qaeda. In May it launched an airstrike that killed al-Shabaab leader Aden Hashi Ayro.
Al-Shabaab has also been implementing strict sharia, or Islamic law, in the towns it has seized from the government.
So far this year, a teenage girl has been stoned to death for adultery after being raped and people have been whipped for dancing and playing music.
The developments are also unlikely to be good news for plans to fight a surge in piracy off Somalia, which peaked with the recent seizure of a Saudi supertanker carrying crude oil worth 100 million dollars.
Delegates at a international conference on Thursday said that piracy was inextricably linked to the insecurity in Somalia and called for stronger efforts to help build a stable government.
The Horn of Africa nation has been plagued by chaos and civil war since the ouster of dictator Mohamed Siad Barre in 1991.
CHICAGO (AP) — President-elect Barack Obama has asked if his family can move into Blair House near the White House a little early, but the Bush administration has said, “Sorry.”
The Obamas had asked White House officials to move into the historic house across Pennsylvania Avenue about two weeks earlier than is usual so their two daughters could start school with their new classmates on Jan. 5. Obama aides say the White House told them the request could not be met because the current administration still had plans for the government home.
Obama aides say they understand the complex White House schedules and say the Bushes have been very helpful.
A White House spokeswoman says Blair House is available on Jan. 15.
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia – It is now a little over a year since Ethiopia’s EPRDF Woyanne-led government triumphantly announced to the world that the post 2005 election crises has finally been overcome in the spirit of the new millennium’s rallying dictum of national reconciliation and renewal.
And yet it took the EPRDF Woyanne-led government less than two months after the millennium celebrations to rescind it’s much trumpeted rhetoric and refuse press licenses to independent journalists, illegally restricting the constitutional right to freedom of expression entrusted to all citizens.
But the EPRDF led government Woyanne tribal junta has not stooped there. In addition to making a mockery of the constitution it never tires of lauding, it has vengefully reopened the universally discredited treason trial of 2005 against the publishers of Ethiopia’s free press. As such, what were two of Ethiopia’s leading publishing houses, Sisay Publishing and Serkalem Publishing, have been served with court summons(Number 43246) to appear before the first criminal bench of the federal high court on December 24 2008. The summons details the request by the public prosecutor to seize all liquid and fixed assets of the owners of the publishing houses in an effort to collect fines imposed against them upon conviction in the much discredited and infamous treason trial of 2005.
The federal second criminal bench of the high court had dissolved the two publishing houses after imposing hefty fines against them, which was later revoked by a presidential pardon granted to all those charged and convicted in connection with the post 2005 election crises.
We call on the Ethiopian public and the international community to insist the EPRDF led government has the moral and legal obligation to stay committed to the post election crises settlement, which rests on the premise of the restoration of status-quo-ante, annulling the fines and allowing us to resume our work as journalists.
We would also like to reiterate that Serkalem Fasil,who is in Europe for a human rights campaign, will return to Ethiopia as scheduled, on December 15 2008, and face the court.
Sisay Agena, Serkalem Fasil, Eskinder Nega.
Addis Ababa.
