EDITOR’S NOTE: Dictator Meles Zenawi is begging the international community to save him from his Somalia debacle. Did the international community ask this chigaram Woyanne to invade Somalia in the first place? He cannot even feed his own people in Tigray, but he talks about failure of the Somalia puppet leaders.
(MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS) – Prime Minster dictator Meles Zenawi, called on the international community to contribute in the efforts to find solution to the conflict in Somalia.
PM Meles Zenawi the current chairperson of Inter Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), made the call at the ongoing IGAD meeting in Nairobi, Kenya.
Meles said Somali leaders should work together to reconstruct the country.
He said few African countries have been striving to maintain peace in Somalia, however the international community has not given due attention to that country.
He called for the international community on the occasion to provide humanitarian and technical assistance to Somalia.
Meles noted that the Somali leaders should reach consensus to find lasting solution to the problem. He also urged all parties to act as per the agreement reached in Djibouti.
IGAD member states have agreed to work with the international community to find lasting solution to the conflict in Somalia.
They have reached consensus to back the effort of deployment of peacekeeping forces in Somalia and to implement the agreement signed in Djibouti.
Leaders of IGAD member states, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jendayi E. Frazer and Somali MPs took part in the extraordinary meeting convened to deliberate on the conflict in Somalia.
Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi has reshuffled his 15-member cabinet, including key ministries of Defence, Justice and Agriculture.
Zenawi, who returned on Wednesday from an Inter-Governmental Summit in Nairobi, appointed nine new ministers and presented them to Ethiopian parliament on Thursday.
He has appointed Siraj Fergesa, former Federal Affairs Minister, as the new Defence Minister. The position had remained vacant since June when former Defense Minister Kuma Demeksa became Mayor of Addis Ababa.
Information Minister Berhan Hailu now becomes Justice Minister. No replacement was announced for the ministry. The Public Organization Advisor to the Prime Minister Haile-Maraim Desalegn is the new Government Whip.
Former Minister of State for Health, Dr. Shiferaw Tekle-Mariam,was appointed Federal Affairs Minister while Tefera Deribew becomes Agriculture and Rural Development Minister. He replaces Deputy PM Addisu Legesse.
Deputy Chief of the Amhara State Administration, Demeke Mekonnen, is the new Education Minister, replacing Sintayehu Woldemickael.
The Transport and Communication Minister Junedin Sado has been moved to the Science and Technology Ministry.
Diriba Kuma is the new Transport and Communication Minister and Muferiat Kamil is the Women Affairs Minister.
Addressing the Ethiopian parliament, Mr Zenawi said poor performance was the main reason for the reshuffle.
He expressed hope that the appointees would manage to register a good result by discharging the responsibilities entrusted to them.
Since the EPRDF came to power in Addis Ababa in 1991, the Ethiopian army has been dominated by more seasoned Tigrayan officers who are members or sympathizers of the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (Woyanne, hard core of the governing coalition). This preeminence was further confirmed by the
promotion of 12 higher officers announced on September 2 by the office of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.
Two of the three major generals promoted to lieutenant general are Tigrayans (Se’are Mekonnen Yimer and Tadesse Worede Tesfaye). The third, Bacha Debele Buta is a leader of the Oromo People’s Democratic Organization (OPDO, a member of the governing coalition) suffering from a serious illness. The only brigadier general to be promoted to the rank of major general is the Tigrayan Gebrat Ayele.
Five of the eight colonels promoted to brigadier general are Tigrayans (Kinfe Dagnew Gzebre-Silassie, Gebre-Michael Beyene Tedela, Hintsa Wolde-Giorgis Yohannis, Tekle-Birhan Kahsay Birush and Masho Beyene Desta).
Two others are Amhara (Akele Assaye Asfaw and Wondwosen Teka Agegnew) while a third (Getachew Gidina Wolbana) is from southern Ethiopia.
EDITOR’S NOTE: It is good to see Woyannes get their butt kicked in Somalia. Ethiopian Review would like to remind the world that the war in Somalia is between the Meles crime family and the Somali people since Ethiopia currently has no legitimate government.
NAIROBI (AFP) — Ethiopia Woyanne, whose forces toppled an Islamist regime in Mogadishu two years ago, on Tuesday blamed the failure to restore stability in Somalia on the transitional rulers it helped bring to power.
“Somalia’s problems are not security, but political,” said Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin at a meeting of governments in the region focused on Somalia.
Seyoum said President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed and his successive prime ministers had “not managed to create any institutions of governance to speak of” since they came to power in December 2006.
“The continuing feud within the leadership… had contributed to the paralysis of the TFG,” he added in reference to the transitional federal government.
The TFG, headed by the one-time warlord Yusuf, was formally established in 2004 but its remit never extended beyond the backwater of Baidoa until the Ethiopian Woyanne army invaded Somalia nearly two years ago.
The toppling of an Islamist group that had taken control of large parts of the country and started to impose a tough form of Sharia law brought Yusuf to power but did little to restore calm to a country that has been wracked by violence since the 1991 ouster of strongman Mohamed Siad Barre.
Somalia’s transitional federal charter expires next year when a new constitution is to be drafted and elections held although there is widespread skepticism over whether polls can take place amid the rampant insecurity.
Despite pledges from some African governments, only Uganda has contributed significant numbers to a peacekeeping force which has failed to halt a campaign of guerrilla warfare being waged by an even more radical Islamist faction.
“In all honesty, the international community can hardly be proud of its record in Somalia,” Seyoum said.
“But this is no excuse for the kind of egregious lack of responsible behaviour that we continue to witness on the part of all those in positions of authority in Somalia.”
Yusuf was in open disagreement with Ali Mohamed Gedi, the TFG’s first prime minister who eventually had to resign exactly a year ago.
Gedi’s successor Nur Hassan Hussein has also had his differences with the president and survived a no-confidence vote last month.
On Sunday, a UN-sponsored peace process in Djibouti announced that a deal had been signed by the transitional government and the main Islamist-dominated political opposition group.
The agreement provides for a ceasefire and an Ethiopian Woyanne troop pullback to begin next month, with security responsibilities gradually handed over to Somali police until a UN peacekeeping force is deployed.
The main Islamist insurgent group, which now controls most of southern and central Somalia, rejected the announcement and vowed to continue its armed struggle.
The Shebab, the main insurgent group, accuse the conservative Christian Marxist tribal regime in Addis Ababa of being engaged in a crusade against Muslim Somalia and have refused to negotiate before a full withdrawal is completed. [Since when Woyannes become ‘conservative Christians?]
In recent weeks, Ethiopian Woyanne troops have been less visible on the streets of Mogadishu and Addis Ababa has been sending mixed signals on the future of its presence in the country.
Experts say Ethiopia Woyanne is mulling its exit strategy from the Somali quagmire and argue that a pullback has effectively already started.
“The Ethiopians Woyanne have definitely been planning some form of military pullback. We just don’t know exactly on what scale,” said one expert, who did not wish to be named to ensure his security when he travels to Somalia.
The expert believes the pullback announced on Sunday could entail a redeployment to a handful of locations in Somalia, with a handover of security duties in Mogadishu to the African peacekeeping force and Somali police.
“Of course no one could assume that, speaking now on behalf of my country, Ethiopia Woyanne will continue to keep its troops in Somalia,” Seyoum said in Nairobi.
Yet Ethiopian Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi, who is not attending the Nairobi summit, said earlier this month that he would not hesitate to send his army back in if the Islamists took power.
This must be joke of the year. Meles Zenawi’s wife, Azeb Mesfin, the ‘mother of corruption’ in Ethiopia tells an interviewer that she and her dictator husband have barely enough money to pay for their children’s school.
WASHINGTON DC – Ethiopians in Washington DC held a rally to protest the widespread human rights violation against innocent civilians and systematic repression of ethnic Somalis that is taking place in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia.
As reported by the international media and the recent extensive report made public by Human Rights Watch, in areas inhabited by Ogaden people in eastern Ethiopia, the TPLF/EPRDF regime security forces have raped and sexually assaulted numerous women; displaced entire rural communities and destroyed dozens of rural villages; forced residents to flee to the neighboring countries; summarily executed thousands of of civilians; arbitrarily detained tens of thousands of people; intentionally restricted the delivery of humanitarian assistance and access to food and medical supplies in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Similarly, in the southern and western parts of Ethiopia that are inhabited mostly by Oromo communities, tens of thousands have been detained, tortured or otherwise mistreated.
At the rally organized on Friday October 24, 2008, in front of the US State Department, Ato Fitsum Achamyeleh Alemu, a Virginia based Attorney at law and human rights activist, representing the organizers, talked about gross violation of human rights committed in the past 17 and half years by the TPLF-EPRDF regime.
Fitsum said that from 1992-2008 the TPLF-EPRDF regime killed tens of thousands, forced millions to be displaced or to leave their country, detained and tortured hundreds of thousands. He based his statement on reports US State Department, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. He also stated that the TPLF-EPRDF also instigated ethnic and religious violence.
The protesters asked the US government to take leadership and stop the violence, the killing, the torture of Ethiopians. They also asked a new, independent commission to investigate the human rights situation in every province of Ethiopia and the US, the UN and the European Union to take the human rights situation in Ethiopia seriously and to bring perpetrators of the crimes to justice.
Ato Guled Kassim, a human rights activist in the Washington DC area and originally from Ogaden, also spoke at the rally. Guled challenged the US government, US lawmakers and the international community for looking the other way when such a gross violation of human rights is committed in the Ogaden. He said that US tax payers’ money should not be funneled to dictators like Meles Zenawi.
The Ethiopian Television Network (ETN), the VOA and members of the Ethiopian media were present to provide news coverage at the rally,
At the end of the rally, Ato Fitsum Alemu, Ato Neamin Zeleke, Dr. Kassa Aylew, and Dr. Mekdes Befekdau Mr. John Wysham, head of Ethiopia Desk at the State Department, and handed him the letter addressed to Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Secretary of State.
The letter urges the US government to hold the Meles Zenawi regime accountable for its widespread and gross violation of human rights against thousands of innocent civilians in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia as in other places of Ethiopia.
It also urges the US to send a fact finding mission to the region in order to conduct an investigation of the wide spread and systematic human rights violations by the security forces of the Meles regime, identify those who are directly involved, and ensure that they receive no assistance or training from the United States, as required under the “Leahy law”.
