Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again. Meles Zenawi.
Ethiopia Woyanne plays down war talk ahead of border deadline
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 27 (Reuters) – Three days before a deadline for demarcating their disputed border, Ethiopia Woyanne said on Tuesday it had no plans for another bout of fighting with arch-foe Eritrea but would crush any attempt by Asmara to invade.
Tensions between the Horn of African neighbours have ratcheted up in recent weeks with the approach of the Nov. 30 deadline set by an independent border commission to physically mark their disputed frontier.
“Ethiopia Woyanne has no reason to launch another war against Eritrea. Our intention has always been to resolve all outstanding border problems with Eritrea through peaceful means,” Prime Minister dictator Meles Zenawi told parliament.
“Should Eritrea launch another war, we will make certain that Asmara would never, ever dream of even entertaining or thinking about war again,” he said.
Asmara and Addis Ababa Woyanne have been locked in a dispute over their shared frontier since a 2002 ruling by an independent border commission gave Eritrea the key town of Badme.
The commission was set up by a peace deal ending a 1998-2000 border war killing some 70,000 people.
Ethiopia Woyanne initially rejected the ruling, but now says it accepts it but wants more talks with Eritrea. Asmara rejects calls for dialogue, saying it wants full implementation.
Last November, the commission said it was fed up by the lack of progress with the border and gave both nations one year to make moves to mark the frontier or it would fix it on maps.
Analysts have warned of possible renewed hostilities between the two nations as the deadline approaches.
But both sides say they have no desire to go to war.
The United Nations says Eritrea and Ethiopia Woyanne have moved thousands of troops and heavy weapons to the 1,000-km (620-mile) frontier since the border commission gave its deadline.
The world body and the United States have urged both nations to show restraint.
Analysts say the border deadlock has been complicated by a war in Somalia where Eritrea is accused of backing Somali insurgents battling Ethiopian Woyanne and Somali government troops.
In the last month, Asmara has repeatedly accused Addis Ababa Woyanne of planning to invade.
On Tuesday, Meles said Eritrea was using rebels in Somalia to distract Ethiopia for an invasion from the north.
“Eritrea’s intention was that when rebels and terrorists it supports penetrate into Ethiopian territory from Somalia and create confusion, it was planning to invade the country from the north,” Meles said. “But we have crushed the rebel groups who were fighting a proxy war for Eritrea and as such its plan to invade us fizzled out.”
Eritrea has accused Ethiopia Woyanne of planning to invade. Both sides deny the others’ claims. (Editing by Jack Kimball and Janet Lawrence)
Short wave radio monitors have confirmed that VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia in the Amharic and Afan Oromo languages have been jammed for the past two weeks. VOA Correspondent in Addis Ababa Peter Heinlein reports Ethiopia’s government denies responsibility for the interference.
Listeners to VOA’s Amharic Service began complaining about November 12 that they could not hear the one-hour nightly broadcast. Amharic is the language of commerce and the main official language in Ethiopia.
In recent days, the reports from listeners and monitors confirmed that all five short-wave frequencies used by VOA are being jammed. Broadcasts by the other major western broadcaster in Amharic, Germany’s Deutsche Welle, have also been blocked.
The BBC monitoring service says its experts have determined that the direction from which the jamming originates indicates the signals are being transmitted from within Ethiopia.
In a telephone interview with VOA, Ethiopia’s Information Ministry spokesman Zemedkun Tekle says he doubts the government is involved in jamming.
“I do not think this one is true. Of course I have seen the media reporting saying that, but we do not need, the government does not need to waste its time on doing so,” he said. “I myself have not come across audiences who are saying so, but the relevant body may speak on the details, but I do not think this story is true.”
The two Amharic Service broadcasts are known to have a substantial audience in the Ethiopian capital, which is a hot bed of anti-government sentiment.
Monitors also report jamming of VOA’s Oromo Service, which broadcasts on the same frequencies. Oromo is the language spoken by Ethiopia’s largest ethnic group.
Ethiopia is known to be blocking broadcasts from its neighbor and rival Eritrea. Monitors report the jamming has intensified in recent weeks, as tensions have risen along their disputed border.
A status report issued by the umbrella organization that oversees Voice of America, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, says VOA broadcasts to Ethiopia have previously been jammed during civil unrest in 2005, but the jamming was stopped in mid-2006.
The Voice of America is a multi-media international broadcasting service funded by the U.S. government. VOA broadcasts more than 1,000 hours of news and other programming every week to an estimated worldwide audience of more than 115 million people.
Emebet Bellingham visited her native Ethiopia in 2003 and was stunned at the changes she saw after 17 years. The streets were crowded, the air polluted, and 4.6 million of Ethiopia’s children were orphans. “It just shocked me,” she says.
Euyeal Joseph Zeleke and Emebet Bellingham are
co-directors of The World Family, a San Anselmo-based
nonprofit that is building a community center in an
Ethiopian village and helping equip medical clinics
there. [Photo: Robert Tong]
She returned to her San Anselmo home determined to do something to help her people. Her mother, Yemegnushal Haile – “an amazing woman and a true humanitarian,” Bellingham says – served on the board of an organization helping children whose parents had died of malaria, AIDS, poor sanitation and inadequate care. She planned to start a nonprofit of her own that would be the American partner of the agency where her mom worked in Ethiopia.
Her intentions were derailed when she became pregnant with her second child. She continued to sponsor orphans in Ethiopia on an individual basis – “I have sponsored children since I was 19” – but her plans for a nonprofit were put on the shelf.
Then, last year, her mother died in an auto accident in Addis Ababa, and Bellingham, 39, resolved to pick up the work her mother had started.
She joined with another Ethiopian, Euyeal Joseph Zeleke of San Jose, to found a new nonprofit called The World Family – Ethiopian Orphans and Medical Care.
Zeleke was already working in Ethiopia, rounding up serviceable but outdated medical equipment in American hospitals and sending it to clinics in his native country. He has sent $5 million worth of equipment since 2005, some of it to a clinic that Bellingham’s mother helped build.
Bellingham and Zeleke met in her mother’s hospital room in Ethiopia and decided to team up.
“I am so grateful,” Zeleke says. “She’s a really good person, very dedicated.”
In March, Bellingham went back to Ethiopia, looking for a place on which to focus her efforts.
She fell in love with a rural village called Gara Dima, whose people lived in primitive huts, drinking impure water from a nearby river. “The people were so warm and welcoming,” she says. “This was an underserved community in clear need of help.”
She decided that Gara Dima and a second village nearby could best be served by construction of a community center that would serve everyone, including orphaned children, and would include a library, kitchen, clinic, a large meeting room, classrooms and a guest apartment for visiting experts.
Field Paoli, a design firm in San Francisco, drew plans for a center, to be constructed from bags filled with dirt enclosed in plaster. The firm didn’t charge for its work, and deliberately chose an affordable form of construction. “(Field Paoli) has been supportive in every aspect,” says Bellingham.
Projected cost for the center, which she hopes to start building in January: $95,000. “We expect to get additional donations to help furnish the clinic and library.”
She has already raised $88,000, much of it from a charitable event held at Fort Mason in San Francisco last month.
Meanwhile, the nongovernmental organization she and Zeleke co-direct continues to send medical equipment to Ethiopia, working with the Ministry of Health and the Clinton Foundation, which is building 100 new health centers every year.
The nonprofit sends two 40-foot containers a month to Ethiopia, enough to equip four centers.
Working with the Ministry of Education, World Family has also implemented the opening of two dental schools, the country’s first.
To meet Bellingham is to marvel that she has accomplished so much in a short space of time.
“I am a very driven person,” she says.
Dave McConnell, president of the Marin Environmental Forum, says he is “just amazed that a person (like Bellingham) is taking the bit in her teeth and running with it.” McConnell has consulted with her on environmental aspects of the proposed center.
A reed-slim woman with a fashion model face and a head of springy black curls, Bellingham came to the Bay Area from Ethiopia in 1984 when her father, then an executive with Ethiopian Airlines, decided to send his two daughters here to attend school. (A son was already here.) Bellingham finished high school in Richmond, then enrolled at the Fashion Institute of Design in San Francisco. She then attended the Academy of Art for a year and a half before going to work at Esprit, buying fabric and designing clothes.
Later she began her own highly successful business, designing high-end women’s clothing and selling it to boutiques.
“It just got too hectic,” she says. She had married Michael Bellingham, a painting and decorating contractor, in 1994, and “we decided not to expand my business, and to raise a family instead.”
She is the mother of a girl, 8, and a boy, 4.
The rest of her family is spread out: her sister lives in Hercules, her brother in Singapore, her father is still in Addis Ababa.
She continues to work in the fashion industry, doing freelance work as a designer and wardrobe consultant.But much of her energy goes to the World Family, and she expects that to continue.Many outsider organizations come to Africa, provide relief monies, and disappear, she says. “The villages have nothing lasting to show for the money that’s been spent.
“I hope to reverse that situation.”
HOW TO HELP
– Financial contributions to The World Family can be made online at www.theworldfamily.org or by mail. Checks should be made to The World Family Ethiopian Orphan and Medical Care and sent to either Medical Care Donations, 391 Jacklin Road, Milpitas 95035 or Orphan Care Donations, 310 Laurel Ave., San Anselmo 94960.
– The agency also needs donated warehouse space to store reclaimed medical equipment. Call E. Joseph Zeleke at 408-594-1360 or send e-mail to [email protected].
– Volunteers are also needed. Call Emebet Bellingham at 302-3037 or send e-mail to [email protected]
Thousands of Ethiopians took part in the 2007 Great Ethiopian Run in Addis Ababa today. As soon as the race started, it turned into a protest rally against the Woyanne regime.
The runners chanted slogans that are anti-Woyanne and that condemn the invasion of Somalia.
The runners also chanted:
“Kinijit Yegna!” (Kinijit is ours)
“Bertukan Yegna!” (Bertukan is ours).
“Gifa belew Eritrea Gifa belew! Betemingistun dem be dem adirgew!” (when they reached Arat Kilo)
“H.R. 2003 Endegfalen” (We support H.R. 2003)
The United States says it is more than doubling humanitarian aid to Ethiopia’s troubled Ogaden region. The announcement was made Saturday following talks beween top U.S. foreign aid officials and Ethiopia’s prime minister on the importance of stability in the Horn of Africa region. From Addis Ababa, VOA’s Peter Heinlein reports the meeting came days before a deadline in the simmering border dispute between Ethiopia and neighboring Eritrea.
U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Henrietta Fore’s talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi touched on tensions along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border and on efforts to rush emergency food aid to the insurgency-wracked Ogaden region.
Ethiopia is again allowing several humanitarian agencies into the Ogaden after expelling a number of groups last July, including the International Committee of the Red Cross. Fore said she told Mr. Meles of Washington’s concern that many people in the conflict zone do not have access to basic necessities.
“We spoke about our shared concern to be sure we are looking out for the food security of the people in Ogaden and the work of our many partners who are working in the Ogaden,” said Fore. “We have a good deal of assistance that is going into the Ogaden.”
Fore said the United States is more than doubling this year’s assistance program for Ogaden from $19 million to about $45 million. With the United Nations estimating nearly a million Ogadeni people in need of food, USAID mission director for Ethiopia Glenn Anders termed the assistance an emergency.
“Our office of food for peace has committed to $25 million more in predominantly food grains, but that includes oil and corn; soybean as well, and that’s already purchased and on its way,” said Anders.
USAID administrator Fore acknowledged that she had discussed with Ethiopia’s leader Washington’s concerns about the possibility of renewed outbreak of war along the disputed border with neighboring Eritrea. An estimated 70,000 people died when the Horn of Africa rivals fought in the late 90s, and tensions are again high as a border commission named to adjudicate the dispute prepares to close down late this month.
Fore says she mentioned to Prime Minister Meles that providing aid is easier when countries are stable and peaceful.
“It is always easier to help a country at peace. It is because you can move around the country. People have more hope and more chance of having a little business, going to school, building a clinic,” she added. “People always have more hope if there is stability and security in a country.”
Sitting alongside the USAID administrator, Washington’s ambassador to Ethiopia Donald Yamamoto played down the fact that an independent commission charged with the demarkation of the 1000-kilometer border between Ethiopia and Eritrea is to dissolve later this month. He says Washington believes the two countries must settle their differences themselves, as stated in the Algiers Accord that ended their last war.
“The only way resolution can be achieved is from the parties themselves addressing the issues directly with each other and implementing decisions on resolution of the border issues, and also their own differences,” said Yamamoto.
With border tensions high, a number of high-ranking officials will be visiting the Horn of Africa region in the next weeks to impress on officials the importance of preventing another outbreak of war.
U.N. Undersecretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes is due in Addis Ababa Monday, and will visit the Ogaden region Tuesday. Several U.S. lawmakers and officials are said to be planning trips to Ethiopia soon, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
The rift in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church widened on Friday after a group representing one fraction of the church went to its headquarters at 89 Maxfield Avenue in Kingston and, with the help of bailiffs, took control of the premises.
The group — which is loyal to [Aba Gebremedhin (formerly Aba Paulos)] in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia and which recently won a law suit to claim the Maxfield Avenue headquarters — turned up with new locks and keys to reclaim the premises, and was met with hostility by the other members currently occupying the premises.
An animated Kes Wolde Dawitt (right) who led
the operation to repossess the Maxfield Avenue
headquarters of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church,
caught vigorously objecting to the presence of
the Sunday Observer. Looking on are members
of his flock including its trustee and financial
secretary Sarapheal Hemmings, at left.
(Photo: Joseph Wellington)
Since 1992 there has been a split in the church when the mother church appointed a new patriarch and Archbishop Paulos [Aba Gebremedhin] to replace the incumbent Mekrios, who was ill. A section of the church, led by the late Abuna Yesehaq Mandefro who was in charge of the Western Hemisphere branches of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, contended that the decision by the mother church was a violation of its cannon, which stipulates that an incumbent Archbishop cannot be replaced once he is still alive.
That led to a schism in the first ancient African Christian Church, and separation of its members, with those following the late Abuna Yesehaq declaring their independence of the mother church.
Here in Jamaica, those members loyal to the mother church stopped from fellowship at the Maxfield Avenue headquarters. They began meeting instead at the St Mary Anglican Church on Molynes Road — still observing the ancient rituals of the Orthodox Church. But some of these members, sources say, were automatically excommunicated from the Abuna Yesehaq’s-influenced Maxfield Avenue congregation.
The Molynes Road fraction eventually filed a law suit to claim possession of the headquarters, and on June 15 the court ruled in their favour.
The administrators of the Maxfield Avenue headquarters have since appealed, and a hearing has been set for next Tuesday.
“I’m not really happy about what is happening,” resident priest at the Maxfield Avenue HQ, Kes Gabre Selessie (Fitzgerald), told the Sunday Observer.
“It is a matter that have to go back to the court. they came here while an appeal is pending for the 27th of this month. We will have to wait until the court resettle this matter,” Fitzgerald added.
But Sarapheal Hemmings, a trustee and financial secretary of the Molynes Road fraction told the Sunday Observer that “the rite of possession has been issued by the court for us to come and picket. for the past two weeks they have been issued, and it’s just today we decided to come and takeover. So, we come this morning with the bailiff to just take possession of the place; we’re not here to run the people or anything. We’ve locked up the place now and we’re going to try to arrange a meeting with the administrators to see how we still can workout this thing peacefully,” Hemmings said.
However, Theophilus Dawkins, a member of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church for over 30 years, accused the Molynes Road group of using “brute force.
“I am one of the foundation members here in Jamaica. Now, what they come and done this morning, is to try to dig off the locks and put on new locks, and try to force people to give up the keys for them to put on their locks. And we, the people, were telling them that we don’t want them.”.
“Dem come wid brute force, dem come wid di belly a di beast come tek ova di church,” he added.
The other members of the Maxfield Avenue fraction echoed similar sentiments.
One church sister also complained that a funeral service was about be prevented because the Molynes Road fraction had stated that they (from Maxfield Avenue) should no longer use that building.
“We have a funeral here for a member that passed off. She is supposed to be buried on the 25th; dem lick off the lock, put on dem lock and sey we can have no more service here. And she is a member here from she was young. Her name is Sistah Dotti and her baptism name is Amarian. She is from Trench Town,” the church sister said.
However, Fitzgerald told the Sunday Observer that the Molynes Road fraction had made a concession for the funeral to go ahead today, adding that this was the last service he would be allowed to conduct there.
