By Benoit Noel

HENGELO, Netherlands (AFP) — Ethiopian Haile Gebrselassie failed in an attempt to better his own world record for the one-hour run at the Hengelo Grand Prix on Monday.

After setting four world records at previous meets in the eastern Dutch city, Gebrselassie, the current marathon world record holder, was undone by blustery conditions at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games, part of the IAAF World Athletics Tour.

The 36-year-old clocked up 20km 822metres, falling short of his record of 21km 285m which he set in June 2007 in Ostrava, the Czech Republic.

He was also little helped by pacemakers who failed to keep up with the 1min 07sec lap times needed to mount a real challenge on the record.

“The wind and rain obviously didn’t make things easy,” said Gebrselassie. “And even if the conditions were not optimal, I wasn’t at 100 percent because of a small asthmatic problem.”

Olympic 5,000 and 10,000m champion Kenenisa Bekele was running in the unfamiliar 1500m but pulled up with one lap to run with a leg injury.

The Ethiopian had chosen the 1500m to test and improve his speed in preparation for August’s World Athletics Championships in Berlin.

“Kenenisa felt a slight pain in his right thigh. He preferred to call a halt as a precaution,” said Bekele’s manager Jos Hermens.

It was Bekele’s first outing since he picked up an ankle problem when finishing a disappointing third in a 15km road race in the Netherlands in November.

The race was won by Kenyan Asbel Kiprop, the Olympic 1500m silver medallist, in 3min 34.45sec ahead of Ethiopian Deresse Mekonnen and Moroccan Mohamed Moustaoui.

There were five season best performances at the meet.

Churandy Martina of the Dutch Antilles gained revenge on Shawn Crawford in the 100m, recording 9.97 seconds as the American finished a disappointing seventh, 0.30sec off the pace.

Martina was stripped of his silver medal in the men’s 200m final in the Beijing Olympics after a protest by the United States team that he had run out of his lane.

The move deprived the Dutch Antilles of their first ever Olympic track and field medal, and saw 2004 Olympic champion Crawford take silver behind Jamaican Usain Bolt, who won the race in a world record of 19.30 seconds.

Other men’s season bests included Ethiopian Ali Abdosh in the 5000m, who topped a strong field in 12:59.56, Kenyan Brimin Kipruto in the 3000m steeplechase (8:06.46), and Panama’s Olympic champion Irving Saladino in the long jump (8.56metres).

In the women’s events, Ethiopian Gelete Burka won the 1500m in a season lead of 3:58.79.

PRESS CONFERENCE BY special representative for somalia

Source: U.N.

NEW YORK — Impunity in Somalia was a major factor maintaining a long-running “genocide in motion” in that Horn of Africa country, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General emphasized to correspondents at a Headquarters news conference this afternoon.

“People who have killed, displaced and maimed are still around, whether in Somalia, Nairobi or in their new country home,” Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah said, adding that many who stayed inside Somalia to continue the violence had put their families in safe havens outside the country.

Mr. Ould-Abdallah, who was in New York for consultations at Headquarters, stressed that it was the willingness of anti-Government forces to keep fighting, whether for profit, power or other reasons, that was devastating the country, not the threat of an Ethiopian return or the illegitimacy of the authorities.

The Government might be weak, he said, but it had as strong a claim to legitimacy as most African Governments; overturning it by force would defy Security Council resolutions.

Before last year’s Djibouti Agreement, which facilitated the departure of Ethiopian troops, it was claimed that the foreign presence was prolonging the conflict, he said. After they withdrew, however, the fighting had continued, and he knew of no evidence of continued Ethiopian presence.

“This is a diversion from the real problem,” he said. “Somalis have to stop killing Somalis and reject any alibis.”

As for the support of Eritrea for the Islamist group al-Shabab, he said that there was much talk of such involvement, but there was no way for him to monitor that situation or to know the truth of such a claim. Asked about other foreign rebel fighters, he said the rebel leaders had extended a welcome to such fighters and there was wide information available on them.

When asked what safeguards were in place to make sure international payments to trained police forces in Somalia were not engendering abuse to civilians, Mr. Ould-Abdallah stressed how few trained police there were –- 2,700 –- in that large country in which civilians were being killed every day. Even those police had not been paid for 18 months.

To suggest that they should not be supported was irresponsible, he maintained. “The problem we face today is anarchy and disorder, and not to pay trained policemen because a few of them may have stolen or may have abused is unacceptable,” he said.

On piracy, Mr. Ould-Abdallah said that that the international presence was beginning to show results, because the pirates had to go further afield for their quarry, over 100 pirates had been captured, and their financiers knew they were being watched.

It was important that it be a truly international effort, he said, demonstrating to Somalis that there was international attention being paid to their tragic situation and showing that such efforts could actually work.

Asked about law of the sea issues, he said he was not aware of any connection between Norwegian oil companies and the joint submission for the delineation of the continental shelf made by Somalia and Kenya, assisted by Norway.

He said he did know, however, that Norway had helped other African countries with their submissions, and that Somalia’s was very similar to the ones made by France, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Spain.

Outlining upcoming political activities on Somalia, Mr. Ould-Abdallah said that he planned to be in London for an 8 June meeting with the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, after which he would convene in Rome the International Contact Group on Somalia, of which he is the Chair, although that meeting might be postponed.

He also described contacts with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), an Africa regional economic group, which he said could play a role in the Somali crisis similar to that played by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in the crises in Liberia and Sierra Leone.

Alemayehu G. Mariam

Human Rights and Fairy Tales

For the past several weeks, the noise machine of the dictatorship in Ethiopia has been in overdrive reacting to human rights findings made against it in the February 29, 2009 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report. The official spokesmen of the dictatorship angrily denounced the alleged inaccuracies in that report, carped about its groundless charges of criminal wrongdoing, whined about the hidden agendas of shadowy manipulators of U.S. foreign policy, groused about the fictitious and fanciful claims of human rights abuses and blasted the American government for lying outright to undermine their credibility and portray them as international pariahs. Even the leader of the dictatorship took a jab at the report. With simulated dramatic flair, he described the report as a “fairy tale” (te-ret) and “false propaganda” to his parliament. As usual, he categorically denied the occurrence of any systematic human rights violations, extrajudicial killings, mass detentions without charges and the commission of crimes against humanity by himself, his official minions or security and military forces.

Of course, one man’s fairy tale is another man’s tale of fear. Dr. Merera Gudina, chairman of the Oromo People’s Congress and the United Ethiopian Democratic Forces was quick to disagree, as quoted by the gazette Addis Negger:

I see it as one of the government’s attempts to conceal its human rights abuses. For example, the government claims that ‘there are no secret prisons in Ethiopia,’ but about 15 kilometers away from Ambo, where I have enough information about, there are three unofficial secret prisons: the old Emperor Haile Selassie’s Palace in Ambo, Senkele Police Training Center and Holeta Military Camp. Dedesa, where many thousands had been locked up after the 2005 elections, is not an official prison. We can provide as much evidence as needed. It is well known that people have been jailed in Maekelawi [the notorious high-security torture prison in Ethiopia] from one month to up-to several years without court warrants. I do not understand who the government is trying to deceive.

Others offered similar assessments about the dictatorship’s brazen and audacious denials of documented and established facts of notorious human rights abuses. The funny thing about the dictatorship’s spasmodic eruption of belated moral outrage against an imaginary cabal of evil international human rights organizations is that they had been ignoring those “fairy tale” reports impassively and scornfully for well over a decade. In their recent counteroffensives, they even stressed the fact that it is not their policy to dignify the “false and propagandistic fairy tales” of the human rights organizations with a response. But now, out of the blue, the dictatorship is squealing like a stuck pig and flailing every which way to respond to the 2009 U.S. State Department Human Rights Report. Why? What has changed so dramatically to cause the dictatorship to sweat it out?

We Know Why They Are Squealing!

The dictators are squealing because the U.S. has quietly and matter-of-factly cut off assistance for military training and equipment to them. That is right! No more American taxpayer dollars to train human rights abusers and criminals; no more American taxpayer dollars for guns, tanks and Humvees to kill innocent Ethiopians. No military partnership with thugs! Many people will no doubt be surprised by this fact, but the law is explicit and its provisions plain and unmistakable.

On March 11, 2009, President Barack Obama signed H.R. 1125, the “Omnibus Appropriations Act, 2009” [1] for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2009. H.R. 1105 (Title IV, International Security Assistance, p. 332, fn. 1) prohibits military assistance and training to rogue regimes that engage in gross human rights violations. The relevant legislative language of H.R. 1125 (see fn. 1 below, p. 332) provides,

INTERNATIONAL MILITARY EDUCATION AND TRAINING – For necessary expenses to carry out the provisions of section 541 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961,… Provided further, That funds made available under this heading for assistance for Haiti, Guatemala, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, Libya, and Angola may only be provided through the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations and any such notification shall include a detailed description of proposed activities…

Further, under Title IV of H.R. 1105, “FOREIGN MILITARY FINANCING PROGRAM”, the following prohibition is indicated:

“Provided further, That none of the funds appropriated under this heading may be made available for assistance for Nepal, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Philippines, Indonesia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, Guatemala, Ethiopia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo except pursuant to the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations.

H.R. 1105 also forbids reprogramming of any funds made available in prior appropriations (previous years) to provide assistance to these rogue regimes in the current fiscal year. (See fn. 1, pp. 342, 344):

REPROGRAMMING NOTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS SEC. 7015. (f) None of the funds appropriated under titles III through VI of this Act shall be obligated or expended for assistance for Serbia, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Pakistan, Dominican Republic, Cuba, Iran, Haiti, Libya, Ethiopia, Nepal, Mexico, or Cambodia and countries listed in section 7045(f)(4) of this Act except as provided through the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations.

H.R. 1105 allows training assistance to non-military personnel “who are not members of a government [and] whose participation would contribute to improved civil-military relations, civilian control of the military, or respect for human rights…”

The foregoing change in U.S. military assistance policy in Ethiopia is an extraordinary transformation in U.S. foreign policy. For the first time in decades, the U.S. government has decided to explicitly link human rights abuses in Ethiopia to its military aid program. Congress, by requiring extraordinary presidential reporting “through the regular notification procedures of the Committees on Appropriations” has expressly denied military assistance to the dictators and limited the discretion of the U.S. President to furnish such assistance under the authority of section 541 of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961.

In plain language, H.R. 1105 cuts off military assistance to the identified rogue regimes, but allows the President to waive the prohibition on a case by case basis in the national interest, provided that he notifies the Appropriations Committees of the House and the Senate (committees responsible for funding the U.S. government) 15 days in advance of his intention to do so, and supplies a “detailed description of proposed activities” justifying the waiver. Even in emergency cases, the President must notify the Appropriations Committees that he has provided military assistance to the rogue regimes “no later than 3 days after taking the action to which such notification requirement was applicable.” In short, H.R. 1105 prohibits funds for military training or equipment to dictatorial regimes that engage in gross and consistent human rights abuses. That is why the dictators in Ethiopia were squealing like a stuck pig over the past few weeks!

Sea Change in American Foreign Policy in Ethiopia

In his inauguration speech, President Obama sent a clear message to the tin pot dictators of the world:

To those who cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent, know that you are on the wrong side of history, but that we will extend a hand if you are willing to unclench your fist. To the people of poor nations, we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.

By denying funds for military training and equipment, the President and the new Congress are standing tall with the “starving people of the poor nations” of the world and against the filthy-rich kleptocratic dictators who oppress them and “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent.” The message from the Obama administration to the dictators in Ethiopia is crystal clear: “America will not give you a penny to train your soldiers to terrorize your civilian population, nor will it provide your military establishments a single gun, plane, tank or Humvee to kill them.” George Bush’s unholy “alliance with atrocity” is over. No more unconditional and blind support to dictators who abuse and mistreat their people in the name of “promoting U.S. interests.” Bush’s war on terror under Obama will be transformed into a struggle for global peace under the rule of law and respect for human rights.

Admittedly, U.S. military assistance to the dictatorship in Ethiopia has not been very large, although the dictatorship has received the lion’s share of such aid in the past. What is important about the termination of military assistance in H.R. 1105 is not the dollar amount but rather the implicit moral and political condemnation of the dictatorship for its use of American military aid to violate the human rights of innocent Ethiopians and oppress the population. This simple and straightforward legislative action by the Appropriations Committees represents a sea change, a re-direction, of U.S. foreign policy. It is the first shot across the bow warning all tin pot dictators that the U.S. will no longer form or maintain partnerships with thugs and criminals.

The Obama administration obviously understands that future U.S. military operations with rogue regimes could be adversely affected by such a policy, particularly in terms of potential anti-terror or peacekeeping missions. But the Congress and President Obama are making it clear that they are no longer willing to sustain the culture of impunity of these regimes or subordinate fundamental human rights to political expediency by providing dictators with military training and equipment which will inevitably be used to crackdown on internal opposition and wage war against neighboring countries.

The Moral Challenge in Obama’s Foreign Policy

Last week, President Obama gave a stirring speech on the future direction of U.S. foreign policy and how he plans to keep America safe from its sworn enemies:

… I believe with every fiber of my being that in the long run we also cannot keep this country safe unless we enlist the power of our most fundamental values. The documents that we hold in this very hall – the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights – are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world.

In that speech, the President raised American foreign policy from the murky morass of Bush’s cowboy unilaterialsm to the sublime heights of moral clarity grounded in America’s founding principles and values. The President stressed the urgency of restoring a moral perspective in the debates over the challenges of American foreign policy, and the need to return to fundamental American principles and values for guidance. President Obama has witnessed the enormous damage inflicted upon America’s role in the world, and the corruption of American values and principles under the Bush-Cheney administration. The contrived war in Iraq, the unspeakable abuses at Abu Ghraib prison and the albatross hanging around America’s neck, the grotesque detention facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are merely examples of the moral decay America had to endure over the past eight years. That is why the President had to emphatically declare to the world that he believes “with every fiber of his being” in the “rule of law, liberty, justice, equality fairness and the dignity of the individual”. No more of a foreign policy based on a twisted philosophy of the “end justifies the means”.

We anticipate the hollow and deceitful sovereignty arguments raised so often by the dictators in Ethiopia. They say, “no one can tell them how to run their ‘country’ by giving or denying them aid.” But they need to understand that linking military aid, or for that matter economic aid, to explicit human rights criteria is not to violate anyone’s sovereignty. Sovereign American law (Leahy Amendment) requires denial of military aid to any regime whose military units engage in gross abuses of human rights. By denying military aid, the U.S. is merely dissociating itself from the crimes, corruption and atrocities of the dictators in Ethiopia. The U.S. no longer wants to support and foster their culture of impunity that tolerates the burning of villages in the Ogaden to accomplish the ends of “counter-terrorism”, or the massacre of innocent protesters in the streets to help them “cling to power”. Most importantly, the termination of military assistance to rogue regimes is essentially about America itself and its role in the world. Tin pot dictators have the choice of “clinging to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent”; and America has the choice of clinging fiercely and tenaciously to its fundamental principles and values of “liberty, justice, freedom, fairness, equality and dignity in the world.” H.R. 1105 makes that choice for America.

Writing on the Wall: Endgame!

It is reasonable to suppose that the dictators in Ethiopia see the relevant provisions of H.R.1105 as the proverbial writing on the wall, the beginning of the endgame. They never thought in their wildest imaginations that Barack Obama would be elected President. They thought they had it sewed up by donating millions to a certain foundation. They thought they could throw around their millions on K Street lobbyists and stonewall any change in American foreign policy towards them. They thought they were invincible because they could wine and dine witless American politicians to do their dirty deeds. They thought Bush’s “war on terror” will go on forever. They thought they could exploit to their advantage America’s global dilemma over national security and the protection of human rights. They thought American power came from the shrapnel of its bombs, the deadly accuracy of its missiles and the formidable capabilities of its armed forces. But they could never imagine or understand that America’s awesome power lies in the principles and values declared to a “candid world” over two centuries ago in the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is impossible for them to even begin to understand what President Obama means when he says he believes “with every fiber of his being” in the “power of our most fundamental values”. But it is with the aid of these values and principles that President Obama shall seek to restore America’s leadership in the world, and win the hearts and minds of friends and foes alike.

The dictators in Ethiopia have a big problem on their hands. They don’t know what to do with President Obama. They are confused. Most likely, they feel vulnerable and unsure of what will happen next. So, they will try to entice him to support them by re-deploying troops to Somalia to prove once more that the U.S. needs them to fight against al-Shabaab, al-Qaeda and whoever else is hiding behind a rock there. They will try to scare him by threatening to dump America and go to China for their military needs. They will try to sweet-talk him into believing that they will be nice and take steps to be more democratic and stop violating human rights. They will pile lies upon lies in a desperate attempt not to lose American material and moral support.

But all of that will be in vain. President Obama is not George Bush. He can not be schmoozed by silly talk of the birth pangs of a “nascent democracy” and that sort of hogwash. President Obama knows African politics and history well; and he has spoken eloquently of Africa’s tragic predicament: Dictators that “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent,” human rights abuses, the absence of the rule of law, corruption and repression. One can not overcome these problems by having more guns and tanks or by training soldiers to use them skillfully against innocent citizens. That is why President Obama reached out to all tin pot dictators and promised “that we will extend a hand if [they] are willing to unclench [their] fist”, and offered “to the people of poor nations [that] we pledge to work alongside you to make your farms flourish and let clean waters flow; to nourish starved bodies and feed hungry minds.” America will not give military aid to dictators to kill and oppress their people; but if the dictators “unclench their fists”, it will gladly help them build institutions and civil society organizations committed to deepening democracy, accountability and human rights, and establish “the vital trust between a people and their government.”

Let there be no mistake: President Obama is not naïve. He knows the terrorists and tin pot dictators of the world will not be influenced by pleas for observance of the rule of law, or moral appeals to do what is right. He knows there is no magic formula to transform dictators into democrats. That does not happen even in fairy tales, though it has been said that once in fairyland a frog was transformed into a prince. But there is no fairyland that exists in the imagination where it is possible to change thugs into statesmen. For in the end, U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration will not be about what is wrong with self-delusional tin pot dictators that “cling to power through corruption and deceit and the silencing of dissent.” Rather, it will be about using America’s democratic values and principles to win the hearts and minds of a hostile and skeptical world that has witnessed a great nation degenerate to its lowest level over the past eight years. It will be about how America can get it right, after getting it wrong for so long, in a world that looks anxiously for its moral leadership. It will be a long and hard road ahead, but ultimately America will regain its moral leadership and credibility among the poor people of the world with President Obama at the helm.

America is lucky to have a President who has a moral vision for his nation, openly celebrates “with every fiber of his being” the values and principles upon which his nation is founded, and proudly and cheerfully toils day and night to serve the American people. America is truly blessed to have a leader who knows right from wrong, and swiftly disinherits those “on the wrong side of history”!

[1] http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h1105enr.txt.pdf

The writer, Alemayehu G. Mariam, is a professor of political science at California State University, San Bernardino, and an attorney based in Los Angeles. For comments, he can be reached at [email protected]