EDITOR’S NOTE: In southern Ethiopia, children cannot even go to school because they are too weak from hunger to attend classes.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (APA) – The Ethiopian government The Woyanne tribal junta in Ethiopia and the Kuwait Government on Tuesday signed a loan agreement worth over 25 million dollars for the the construction of roads in the African country.

Among other projects, the agreement said, Ethiopia will use the money to construct the Wukro-Zalambesa road spanning 96 kilometres in the north of the country in the Tigray regional state.

Ethiopian State Minister of Finance and Economic Development (MoFED), Mekonen Manyazewal and Deputy Director General of Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, Hesham Ibrahim Al-Waqayan signed the agreement.

Manyazewal said in a statement that the road will help improve the country’s economy.

By LUCAS BARASA and JAMI MAKAN, THE DAILY NATION –

NAIROBI, KENYA – Five countries have taken the Somali Transitional Federal Government leaders to task over their failure to end turmoil in the country.

The Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) council of ministers chairman Seyoum Mesfin, who is Ethiopia’s Woyanne Foreign Affairs minister, and his Kenyan counterpart Moses Wetang’ula, led the onslaught on the Somali leadership on Tuesday, blaming it for the instability.

Mr Wetang’ula accused some of the leaders of benefiting from the mayhem in the Horn of Africa country. The other Igad countries are Djibouti, Uganda and Sudan.

Mr Wetang’ula and Mr Mesfin accused Somalia’s President, Prime Minister and National Assembly Speaker of jostling for power at the expense of Somalis, who had hoped for an end to 14 years of war following the ouster of dictator Siad Barre and the setting up of the TFG in Nairobi four years ago.

The Somali leadership was accused of failing to set up institutions of governance that could have seen the country return to its feet in accordance with the Transitional Federal Charter.

“Little has been accomplished in the last four years,” Mr Wetang’ula said of the charter that expires next September.

The TFG had been expected to develop a new constitution to take over from the charter, set boundaries of federal states and enact a Political Parties Bill in readiness for elections in 2009.

The new constitution should have been in place two-and-a-half years after the signing of the Somali peace deal.

Mr Wetang’ula urged the UN to take over the role of AU forces in Somalia as the African body did not have sufficient funds to sustain them.

He said Kenya wanted a peaceful and prosperous Somalia. “We must all realise we don’t have any more time to discuss the Somalia crisis in capital cities. Somalis have suffered for too long — 18 years,” Mr Wetang’ula said.

Mr Mesfin said the clock was ticking and that in 10 months, the institutions in Somalia will not be legal and that Ethiopian Woyanne forces will also have to be removed.

He said the international community was not proud of its record in Somalia as it had ignored the country for too long.

Igad executive secretary Mahboub Maalim said the security situation in Somalia was deteriorating and called for the strengthening of ongoing peace efforts in Djibouti. Fourteen previous attempts to bring peace to Somalia have failed.

Mr Maalim, who was addressing his first extraordinary meeting since being appointed to the post in June, promised to build the organisation to greater heights.

Dancers and musicians welcome U.S. Embassy spokesman Michael McClellan to the opening of an American Corner library in Jimma, Ethiopia (photo: U.S. State Department)

JIMMA, ETHIOPIA – When Michael McClellan, spokesman for the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, stepped off a plane in the Ethiopian highland city of Jimma on October 24 and walked toward the terminal, a throng of people dressed in their best finery was walking toward him.

“This looks like a wedding procession,” a colleague of McClellan’s said.

“It might be for us,” McClellan answered.

He was right, in one sense. A few seconds later, the welcoming party and McClellan met on the tarmac. Women filled his arms with bouquets of tropical flowers. The mayor, the police chief, the head of the tourism office and other dignitaries shook his hand and embraced him. In the parking lot, McClellan and his welcomers piled into a 13-vehicle motorcade led by a police truck with its red and blue lights whirling silently. The motorcade snaked through the city, then onto a rutted red dirt road lined with wild coffee bushes, goats and waving children to a small mosque on the summit of a mountain above the city. There, Jimma Mayor Mohammedamin Jemal made the first of many speeches that would be given that day.

After a tour of a former palace and a lunch of Ethiopian stews and injerra, the moist pancake-like food that is torn into chunks and used to pick up food and plunk it in the mouth, McClellan was driven to the Jimma Public Library. Musicians played and sang and women danced as McClellan entered the building.

The leaders of this city of 200,000, which is said to be the birthplace of coffee, organized the festivities to {www:celebrate} the opening of an “American Corner,” a room in the local library outfitted with computer terminals, books, videos, and CD-ROMs. The purpose of the corner is to provide the local citizens with information about the United States, about HIV/AIDS and many other things.

“I am very, very happy,” said Ilma Tamiru, a former teacher who now works in a public relations company. “I don’t have words to express it. For many years, this library did not have new books and information.”

Assefa Korsa, an official at the Jimma education office, said, “Everybody can get reference information and books. People will be able to improve their talents, thanks to the American Corner.”

Until the 1970s, Jimma had a U.S. Information Service library that some locals still remember. It provided books and magazines and held film screenings and lectures to inform the people of Jimma about the United States. The communist military junta that took power in 1974 closed the library.

“I am delighted that in the case of the Jimma American Corner we are renewing and continuing a partnership that has a solid history of achievement and service in this historic community,” McClellan said. He mentioned Andrew Carnegie, an American businessman and philanthropist who built thousands of public libraries in the United States and other English-speaking countries in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Carnegie believed that “the free public library is the strongest component of building democracy in the world,” in McClellan’s words.

The diplomat stressed that the American Corner operates as a partnership between the U.S. and Ethiopian governments for the benefit of the people of Jimma. He said the governments agree that the American Corner is open to anyone. With that in mind, the corner was established at a public library, where all citizens would have access.

McClellan said that he hopes users of the corner will also draw on resources and expertise of the Information Resource Center at the U.S. Embassy in Addis Ababa, particularly those who might be considering going to university in the United States.

The American Corner in Jimma is the fourth in Ethiopia. The U.S. Agency for International Development, through its Ethiopia Education Fund, provided most of the $32,000 needed to open it.

The deputy mayor of Jimma, Ato Shemelis, said that more meaningful than the informational materials provided by the American Corner is the U.S. commitment to help improve the academic performance of the students of Jimma. “It gets us to think globally and act locally. It is the beginning of a new relationship with the American people,” he said.

ADDIS ABABA, ETHIOPIA (APA) – Police is investigating a bus accident late Monday evening that killed 19 and seriously wounded 10, sources said here Tuesday.

At least 19 people died Tuesday when a bus travelling from Addis Ababa to Hawasa city, 275 kilometres south ca accident in Ethiopian town, police said here on Tuesday.

Police said the passenger bus which left Addis Ababa slammed into an accident at Dugda Bora, as it headed for Awassa city, located at some 275 kilometers south of Ethiopia.

Over 30 people were on board in the bus.

Ethiopia is among countries with highest rate of traffic accident in the world where over 2,000 people die annually in road accidents.

Ethiopians in Denver, Colorado, have built a magnificent church, and earlier this month they hosted the North America Ethiopian Demera celebration during the Meskel holiday. The church, Dagmawit Gishen Mariam, they built is simply awesome. They did all this while keeping Woyanne cadres at bay and staying loyal to the legitimate patriarch of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abune Merkorios.

See more photos here.