(Reuters) – U.N. undersecretary-general for Humanitarian Affairs John Holmes was on Tuesday in Ethiopia’s troubled southeastern Ogaden region where government forces are fighting separatist rebels.
The one-day visit is the most high profile since the ethnically Somali region made international headlines in April when Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels attacked a Chinese-owned oil exploration field and killed 74 people.
Holmes is due to meet the region’s president before inspecting U.N. relief operations that began a couple of weeks ago, after the international body said 953,000 people there needed food aid.
Holmes will also meet representatives of local herding communities but there has been no mention of him meeting rebels, who have welcomed the U.N. presence in the region.
The rebels accuse the government of human rights abuses in a crackdown that followed the April attack and both sides routinely claim to have inflicted huge casualties on the other.
Holmes will be accompanied by the head of Ethiopia’s Disaster Preparedness and Prevention Agency and by the heads of U.N. humanitarian operations in Ethiopia.
The Ethiopian government Woyanne and the United Nations say emergency relief operations continue in the region and that 7,000 tonnes of food aid has now been delivered.
It has also pledged that 30 trucks of food a day will travel to Ogaden over the next two months until the estimated 17,407 tonnes needed are delivered.
The United Nations said last week 19 non-governmental organisations have been allowed to work in the Ogaden region following the expulsion from the region of some aid agencies including the International Committee of the Red Cross in July.
Holmes will meet Ethiopian dictator Prime Minister Meles Zenawi in Addis Ababa on Wednesday before continuing his east African tour in Sudan and Kenya.
(Reporting by Barry Malone; Editing by Helen Nyambura-Mwaura and Janet Lawrence))