This is what Ethiopia looks like after 17 years of rule by the World Bank-financed brutal dictatorship of Meles Zenawi’s Tigrean People Liberation Front (Woyanne). Children living on the rough streets of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, describe their days and nights of struggle.

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.

By Louis Charbonneau

UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations has been unable to put together a multinational military force to stabilize Somalia, which diplomats said means the lawless Horn of Africa country might be left to fend for itself.

In a report to the U.N. Security Council last month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon made clear that the kind of force that would be needed for Somalia was beyond the capabilities of blue helmet peacekeepers, who are typically deployed to monitor an existing peace agreement and not to crush an insurgency.

Ban said the initial stabilization force would need around two brigades — roughly 10,000 troops — and would have to be a “highly capable, self-sustaining, expeditionary force with full capability to defend itself against hostile threats.”

Council diplomats told Reuters that U.N. officials had been lobbying countries to lead or join an international “coalition of the willing.” But so far none is willing to supply troops.
They said Ban had hoped to persuade Turkey, a NATO member with a strong military and a predominantly Muslim country like Somalia, to lead the force. But Ankara turned him down.

“One country has offered to provide airlifts, logistical support and funding,” a diplomat told Reuters. He declined to name the country but others said it was the United States.

“No one wants to go to Somalia, it’s too risky,” he said.

For months members of Somalia’s transitional government and the African Union have pleaded with the Security Council to authorize a U.N. peacekeeping force that could take over from AU troops, who say they are incapable of stabilizing Somalia.

The country has been in virtual anarchy since the collapse of a dictatorship 17 years ago. Islamists now control most of the south. Feuding heavily-armed clan militias hold sway in many other areas and a weak, Western-backed interim government has little authority outside the capital of Mogadishu.

Ethiopian Woyanne troops have supported the government but Addis Ababa the Woyanne regime says it will withdraw its troops at the end of the year. The AU says it also will withdraw its 3,200 soldiers.

PIRACY: “JUST A SYMPTOM”

Outside intervention in Somalia has a checkered history. The killing of U.S. troops in Somalia in late 1993, which inspired the film “Black Hawk Down,” marked the beginning of the end for a U.S.-U.N. peacekeeping force that left in 1995.

Several council diplomats and U.N. officials told Reuters that Western countries want to combat the scourge of piracy off the coast of Somalia but are unwilling to deal with the root problem — the lawlessness that allows piracy to flourish.

A surge in piracy this year in the busy Gulf of Aden and Indian Ocean off Somalia has driven up insurance costs, brought the gangs tens of millions of dollars in ransoms and prompted foreign navies to rush to the area to protect shipping.

The U.S. delegation has circulated to the 15-nation council a draft resolution that would give countries the right to pursue pirates on land as well as at sea. Council members including Indonesia and South Africa said they were not impressed.

“They need to deal with the problem of piracy in a holistic manner,” Indonesia’s U.N. Ambassador Marty Natalegawa told Reuters, adding that he could not support the text in its present form. “Piracy is a symptom of a larger problem.”

The Security Council’s Monitoring Group on Somalia reported Thursday that the transitional government was disintegrating and the vast majority of its soldiers and police had deserted.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)

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.