(AP) — HENGELO, Netherlands: Haile Gebrselassie discovered his old legs still carry him well in the 10,000 meters. Irving Saladino found a new spring in his step and marked it with the longest jump in 14 years.
Haile Gebrselassie ran his fastest 10,000 meters in four years at the FBK Games on Saturday, well within the 27-minute mark he sought to push his case to be included on the Ethiopian Olympic team for the Beijing Games.
Gebrselassie finished second in blustery winds in 26 minutes, 51.20 seconds, only .67 seconds behind compatriot and Olympic silver medalist Sileshi Sihine.
Gebrselassie has converted into a marathon runner and, at 35, could no longer find the finishing kick to distance his opponents. Still, he had made his mark, beaten his target by almost 9 seconds, and his thumbs-up and beaming smile showed his happiness.
As Gebrselassie was circling the track during his race, Irving Saladino of Panama leaped 8.73 meters to become the seventh biggest long jumper of all time.
On his first attempt, the world champion had a back wind of 1.2 meters to set the mark.
Saladino is working on a new technique which he hopes will allow him to break the world record of 8.95 meters of Mike Powell, hopefully at the Beijing Olympics in August.
The 25-year-old Saladino jumped 8.53 at last year’s FBK Games, but complained he had to contain himself because the sand pit was too short. Organizers extended the runway this year and it paid off for the world champion.
In the 800 meters, Pamela Jelimo set the fastest time in five years, clocking 1:55.76 to set a world junior record. The 19-year-old Kenyan burst onto the international scene, easily beating 1,500 world champion Maryam Jamal of Bahrain by 2.9 seconds.
Kenenisa Bekele wanted to break his own world record in the 5,000, but blustery winds and a lack of good pacemakers decided otherwise. Forced to run the second half of the race all alone, with only the crowd to cheer him on, the Ethiopian finished in 12:58.95, a world leading time but more than 20 seconds off his record.
Gebrselassie has long excelled in Hengelo, setting four world records here over the years. The runner-up finish made him just as happy since he needs to get on the 10,000 squad after pulling out of the Beijing marathon for health reasons.
So, he is seeking to recover time and get back into the race where he already won Olympic gold in Atlanta 1996 and Sydney 2000.
In the sprint hurdles, world indoor champion Lolo Jones won in 12.87 seconds, a mediocre time if not for the strong headwind she faced. In the absence of injured indoor world-record holder Susanna Kallur, she beat Vonette Dixon of Jamaica by .10 seconds, with U.S. compatriot Kellie Wells crossing in 13.01.
Christian Cantwell, another world indoor champion, threw 20.88 meters to win the shot put, ahead of Germany’s Peter Sack with 20.60, and Canada’s Dylan Armstrong with 20.24.
Year best 5000m time for Ethiopia’s Gelete Burka
HENGELO, Netherlands (AFP) — Ethiopia’s Gelete Burka set a year best time of 14min 45.84sec in the 5000m in a meet here on Saturday.
The 22-year-old 1500m African champion took almost 15sec off the 15:00.6 mark set by Romania’s Elena Antoci on May 11 in Craiova.
Burka beat compatriots Meselech Melkamu (14:46.25) and Belaynesh Fikadu (14:46.84).
ADDIS ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopia Woyanne and Uganda on Saturday denied accusations by a U.N. weapons sanctions committee that their soldiers broke the world body’s arms embargo on Somalia.
The United Nations says the Horn of Africa nation is awash with weapons despite a 1992 arms ban that followed the collapse of the central government a year before. Somalia has been engulfed in civil conflict ever since.
Dumisani Kumalo, chairman of the U.N. Security Council’s Somalia sanctions committee, accused “elements” of the African Union (AU) peacekeeping force in Somalia and Ethiopian Woyanne and Somali government troops of arms trafficking.
“We want to assure the world community that this accusation does not have an iota of truth,” Wahade Belay, spokesman for the Ethiopian Woyanne Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Reuters.
“In fact our troops were and still are playing an exemplary role in mitigating the arms trade inside Somalia,” he said.
Kumalo said 80 percent of the ammunition on sale in Somalia’s numerous arms markets comes from Ethiopian Woyanne and Somali troops.
Ethiopia Woyanne sent thousands of soldiers into Somalia in late 2006 to help the Somali government oust an Islamic Courts movement from the south. Since then, the two allies have battled an insurgency led by members of the Islamists.
Kumalo said the presence of Ethiopian Woyanne troops inside Somalia was itself a violation of the 16-year-old arms ban.
The sanctions committee report comes as the world body unanimously adopted a measure for a stronger U.N. presence in Somalia and opened the door for a possible U.N. force.
A 2,200-strong AU peacekeeping contingent, known as AMISOM, has been unable to stem the mounting violence.
Uganda, which has 1,600 troops in Mogadishu, joined Ethiopia Woyanne in condemning the sanctions committee’s accusations.
“I can assert that none of the AMISOM commanders is involved in any form of arms trafficking in contravention of the U.N. arms embargo,” said Captain Barigye Bahouku, spokesman for the mission.
Both Ethiopia Woyanne and Uganda said they would investigate the claims if provided with evidence.
An AU official said he had no information confirming the allegations against its troops but promised an investigation.
“We are going to analyse the report in detail,” El Ghassim Wane, head of the AU’s conflict management division, told Reuters. “We are requesting AMISOM to carry out an investigation.”
Last week, Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi said his troops would remain in Somalia until “jihadists” were defeated.
The United States, whose main ally in the region is Addis Ababa Woyanne, says some of the Islamist-led insurgents have links to terrorist organisations.
(By Tsegaye Taddesse. Additional reporting by Frank Nyakairu in Kampala; Writing by Jack Kimball; Editing by Giles Elgood)
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said today that it is concerned by conditions in Ethiopia and that the situation will deteriorate further without an immediate infusion of resources to carry out life-saving interventions.
The UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said that eight million Ethiopians are chronically food insecure and at least 3.4 million Ethiopians are in need of emergency food relief – a figure that is likely to rise.
The agency estimates that 176,000 children are in need of urgent therapeutic care for severe malnutrition and says that the rapidly deteriorating situation is the worst since the major humanitarian crisis of 2003.
Up to six million children under 5 years of age are living in impoverished, drought-prone districts and require urgent preventive health and nutrition interventions.
“It is extremely unfortunate that the combined effects of drought, food price hikes, and insufficient resources for preventive measures resulted in an emergency that jeopardizes child survival gains in Ethiopia,” said Bjorn Ljungqvist, UNICEF’s Representative in the Horn of Africa nation.
UNICEF is providing therapeutic feeding to severely malnourished children. Over the weekend the agency received 90 tons of food supplies, noting that as much as 1,800 tons are needed over the next three months.
The agency also estimates that $50 million are needed for life-saving health, nutrition, water and sanitation interventions, but has received only $6 million to date.
Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP) is facing a total relief shortfall of 181,000 tons of food, valued at $145 million.
NAIROBI (AFP) — United Nations monitors have accused Ugandan peacekeepers of selling arms to Islamist rebels fighting the government and Ethiopian Woyanne troops in Somalia.
Amid a row over the acquisition of military hardware by bickering factions in Somalia’s transitional government, the UN panel charged with monitoring the situation there said it was alarmed by “continued militarisation and an increase of armed action” between the rival camps.
“The fact that members of the transitional federal government are buying arms at the market in Mogadishu is not new to the monitoring group,” it said.
“But during this mandate period, the monitoring group received information on sales of arms by prominent officials of the security sectors of government, Ethiopian Woyanne officers and Ugandan officers of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM).”
The report, seen by AFP on Friday, was sent to the UN Security Council on Thursday by the panel which is charged with reviewing the 1992 arms embargo slapped on Somalia after it descended into anarchy a year earlier with the ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.
In it, the experts said arms on sale originate from army stocks or are seized following battles with Islamist insurgents.
“According to arms traders, the biggest supplier of ammunition to the market are Ethiopian Woyanne and transitional federal government commanders, who divert boxes officially declared ‘used during combat’,” the report said.
Since Barre’s ouster, several well-armed clan-based factions have been in an almost constant state of low-level war, hindering effective monitoring of the UN arms embargo.
The UN Security Council has rejected several pleas by President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed to ease the arms ban, warning that such a move would exacerbate fighting in the lawless nation.
The experts accused neighbouring Ethiopia, Yemen and Eritrea of continuously violating the embargo by sending weapons shipments to the increasingly hostile factions within Somalia.
Somalia’s breakaway northern regions of Puntland and Somaliland are other entry points for weapons.
“The routes are more covert, and the weapons reach Somalia either by a large number of small vessels, or through remote locations along the land borders,” the report said.
“The Somali police force no longer differs from other actors in the armed conflict, despite the fact that many of its members have received training in accordance to international standards,” it added.
The panel lamented that the Somali government’s budget, heavily supported by international donors, lacks even the most minimal standards of transparency.
“Some donors expressed discontent that some of the funding provided, despite being earmarked for civilian and peace-building activities, may have been used for military activities and purchase of military materials.”
Somali troops, their Ethiopian Woyanne allies and AU peacekeepers have been routinely targeted by Islamist insurgents over the past year, worsening security and choking humanitarian operations in the country.
DELDEN, Netherlands — Kenenisa Bekele has ruled out attempting to win both the 5,000 and 10,000 meters at the Beijing Olympics, a feat he nearly accomplished at the Athens Games in 2004.
Bekele says he is the best form of his life after winning the world cross-country title again, but announced on Friday that tougher competition and a tight schedule ruled out challenging for both golds.
“I don’t want to run the double this time,” Bekele said on the eve of his attempt to run a world record in the 5,000 at the FBK Games on Saturday.
On June 8, he will also attempt to break the 10,000 mark at the Prefontaine Classic in Eugene, Ore.
In Beijing, Bekele will focus on defending his gold in the 10,000, a title held by Ethiopians since Haile Gebrselassie won at the 1996 Atlanta Games.
In Athens, Bekele was beaten by 0.2 seconds in the 5,000 by Morocco’s Hicham El Guerrouj in a sprint to the finish.
Few athletes have achieved the distance double, though Emil Zatopek of Czechoslovakia did a triple in 1952 by adding the marathon. The last runner to win the double was Miruts Yifter of Ethiopia at the 1980 Moscow Games.
SALT LAKE CITY — An Ethiopian refugee has been sentenced to serve four months in federal custody for conspiring to import more than 400 pounds of an exotic plant used as a drug.
Sherif Kadir Sirage, known as Sherif Sherif, was sentenced Wednesday in federal court with four months’ credit for time served. Another man, Patrick Bahati, is awaiting sentencing on a similar charge.
Prosecutors say Sirage and Bahati arranged to have a plant called khat flown into Salt Lake City from Ethiopia.
Khat is a flowering evergreen shrub that is chewed like tobacco in East Africa and the Arabian peninsula. It is considered a narcotic and is illegal in the U.S., as well as parts of Europe, east Africa and the Arabian peninsula. The plant’s effect on the human body is similar to ephedra.
Sirage is expected to be released, since he already has served the time the court sentenced him to.
