Mogadishu 15, June.07 (Sh.M.Network) Osman Ali Hassan Atto, a member of Somalia’s transitional parliament has accused Ethiopian [Woyanne] forces who searched his home in Mogadishu of robbing him around four thousand US Dollars.
In an exclusive interview with Shabelle Radio, Mr. Atto has confessed that the Ethiopian [Woyanne] forces found weapons in his house but he angrily accused the troops of taking other valuable items from his house including a large sum of Money.
“It is true that Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops found weapons in my house during their search but they also took money in cash such as 369,000 US dollars, four thousands Emirates Dirham, a large number of jewelry for my wife, valuable watches of mine and Thuraya satellite phones and they tore all my bags” said Atto in his interview with Shabelle Radio.
The Somali MP pointed out that all those incidents are violations against his status of being a member of Somali parliament and also against his Somali citizenship and the charter of the Somali transitional government.
Osman Ali Atto called the presence of Ethiopian [Woyanne] troops in Somalia as against the wishes of the Somali people.
The fury accusations of this MP came after the transitional federal government of Somalia displayed to the journalists a huge cache of weapons seized during a joint army search operation by its forces and their Ethiopian allies.
BERLIN (AP) – Two white men were acquitted Friday of the racially motivated beating of an Ethiopian-born engineer in a case that raised fears of xenophobic attacks before last year’s soccer World Cup, which turned out to be unwarranted.
The attack on Ermyas Mulugeta in Potsdam, outside Berlin, left the man in a coma for several weeks.
Mulugeta had been calling his wife at the time of the assault on April 16, 2006, and his attackers were recorded on her voicemail taunting him with racial epithets and other insults.
But defendants Bjoern Liebscher and Thomas Michaelis both denied involvement in the attack and said they were not at the scene. Mulugeta himself said he could not remember the attack.
In addition, the Potsdam state court was confronted with contradictory witness testimony and judges said they ruled for acquittal because of lack of evidence to prove the two were responsible for the assault.
The budget will be wholly funded by taxes as western donors have withheld direct budgetary support to the Horn of Africa country in protest over a government crackdown on opposition supporters.
Ethiopia’s Council of Ministers has forwarded a 43.9 billion birr ($4.9 billion) budget to parliament for 2007/08, 20 percent bigger than the previous year’s, a state-run news agency reported on Thursday.
It includes 10.818 billion birr for current spending and over 18.868 billion birr for capital expenditure, the Ethiopian News Agency said.
“The government has given the highest priorities for spending on the economic sector, developing infrastructure such as roads as well as in the social sectors, mainly to enhance health and education in the country,” a finance ministry official told Reuters.
The budget will be wholly funded by taxes as western donors have withheld direct budgetary support to the Horn of Africa country in protest over a government crackdown on opposition supporters following a controversial election in 2005.
Aid is instead channeled through a new mechanism known as Protection of Basic Services Programme (PBS) to help essential services in education, health and water.
One day after Somalia’s interim government postponed a national reconciliation conference for the third time in three months, some residents of Mogadishu are expressing doubt the conference can be held while Ethiopian troops are in the country. VOA Correspondent Alisha Ryu in Mogadishu reports that a late-night gun battle Wednesday between Ethiopian troops and insurgents in south Mogadishu has caused more people to flee their homes.
Just hours after Somalia’s national reconciliation committee announced a month-long delay in peace talks, insurgents in the capital demonstrated why bringing Somalis together is proving to be a struggle for the interim government.
Ethiopian troops patrol the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, 4 June 2007
An unknown number of insurgents simultaneously attacked at least three Ethiopian positions in south Mogadishu with automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades. The Ethiopians returned fire, sparking an intense half-hour battle in the streets.
Some homes around the area appeared to have been abandoned overnight. Residents tell VOA that some people, who returned to their homes in recent weeks, have fled the city again, fearing the start of another round of fighting.
An Ethiopia-led security sweep of the city in March and April killed more than 1,500 people and displaced nearly a fifth of Mogadishu’s two million residents.
Ali Mohamed Hussein, 42, works as a private security guard in south Mogadishu. He says most insurgents, including Islamist fighters, are Somalis who belong to the locally-dominant Hawiye clan.
Hussein says many clan members oppose the government because it is being protected by Ethiopian troops and is forcing Somalis to live under an occupying force. He says the government has also shown little willingness to reconcile with its perceived enemies.
Hole left by an Ethiopian tank shell in a Mogadishu building (May 2007)
Hussein says Wednesday’s violence shows there is still no peace or stability in the city. He says he does not believe the government can hold a reconciliation conference while some Hawiyes, such as the Islamists, are excluded from the talks and Ethiopians are still in the country.
In another part of the city, truck driver Hassan Abdi Farah, 20, predicts the conference will be postponed indefinitely.
Farah says he is certain the peace talks will not take place in the near future because even the Hawiye clan is divided and unable to agree on anything. He says he believes the only way to bring peace to the country is for the elders of the sub-clans to unite and for Ethiopians to leave Somalia immediately.
Ugandan peacekeepers on patrol in Mogadishu (May 2007)
Ethiopia says it does not want its troops to stay in Somalia, but that it cannot leave before a full force of African Union peacekeepers replaces its soldiers.
The African Union has committed to sending 8,000 troops, but so far it has only 1,400 troops from Uganda on the ground in the Somali capital.
Friday, 15 June 2007
Press Release: United Nations
Members of the United Nations Security Council leave today on a weeklong mission to Ethiopia, Sudan, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) in support of ongoing peace efforts in Africa.
On Saturday, under the joint leadership of Ambassadors Emyr Jones-Parry of the United Kingdom and Dumisani Kumalo of South Africa, the delegation will meet in Addis Ababa with African Union (AU) and Ethiopian officials, as well as with the AU Peace and Security Council, a UN spokesperson announced today.
The Council will then head to Khartoum, where meetings are planned for Sunday with President Omar al-Bashir and other top Sudanese officials and with officials from the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).
On Monday, delegates will be in Accra, Ghana, to meet with President John Kufuor in his capacity as AU President.
The following day the Council delegation will be in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, for meetings with Ivorian leaders, including President Laurent Gbagbo and Prime Minister Guillaume Soro.
Later on Tuesday, the delegation will proceed to Kinshasa in the DRC, where Council delegates will meet with President Joseph Kabila, key parliamentary leaders and officials from the UN peacekeeping mission (MONUC), according to the spokesperson, who said the delegation will return to New York on 21 June.
UNITED NATIONS — After years of conflict and a tense border dispute, the Woyanne regime in Ethiopia has accepted a U.N. commission’s ruling to turn over a disputed town to Eritrea.
The Woyanne dictatorship gave its unconditional acceptance of the commission’s decision, announced five years ago, that it return the key town of Badme to Eritrea, in a letter last week to the U.N. Security Council.
“I believe it’s good news … that was one of the bottlenecks in the situation,” U.N. associate spokesman Yves Sorokobi said Thursday. “If they do agree, it should move the process forward a bit more quickly.”
The Horn of Africa neighbors initially promised to accept the boundary commission’s 2002 ruling awarding Badme to Eritrea, but Ethiopia has not handed it over.
Both countries claim Badme and fought a bloody 2 1/2-year war after Ethiopian soldiers opened fire on Eritrean soldiers in the border town in 1998.
A 2000 truce agreeing to cease hostilities has made the border more peaceful, but tensions have occasionally flared to the point international observers feared a new war could break out.
Sorokobi said there have been no relations between the two sides.
The commission renewed its call for a response from the two countries last month, giving a November deadline for the implementation of its decision on the new border.
Eritrea responded to the commission’s request in May, agreeing with the decision.
Since its publication last week, there has been virtually no reaction to the Ethiopian [Woyanne] acceptance.
Eritrea’s U.N. Mission said no one was available to comment.
“There needs to be an official reaction and to the best of my knowledge it hasn’t happened yet,” Sorokobi said.
The Security Council will be in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Friday and Saturday to meet with African Union and Ethiopian officials at the start of a five- country African mission. Sorokobi said the Ethiopia-Eritrea border issue will probably be discussed.
A 2005 U.N. resolution called for a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) buffer zone between the two countries, but in the past year Eritrean forces have moved into the zone and have stymied efforts by U.N. peacekeepers to monitor the area. The Security Council has repeatedly called for Eritrea to lift its restrictions, including its ban on U.N. helicopter flights and night patrols.
Sorokobi said there is not much the U.N. can do to force the two parties to cooperate.
“The U.N. has not handed out any punishment to Eritrea even though it is aware for several months now,” he added.
The U.N. peacekeeping force in the tense buffer zone has been reduced in the past year by 2,500 troops to 1,700. Authorization for the force expires next month, but Sorokobi said that it will likely be extended.
If the new border decision is not implemented, Sorokobi warned that “positions will probably harden.”
“There has been an increase of hostile rhetoric from both parties and it’s something that has preoccupied the situation,” he said.
