ETHIOPIA BLAMES ERITREA OVER REGION’S WORSENING CONFLICTS
Oct 12th, 2009 by admin
ADDIS ABABA has accused Asmara of sowing havoc in the region and reiterated calls for sanctions over Eritrea’s alleged support for Somalia’s rebels.
“It is going on and on with its creating havoc agenda. The character of this regime is not changing,” Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi Meles as telling the parliament.
He said that Ethiopia has done its best to establish a dialogue with its former foe, with which it fought a 1998-2000 border war that left more than 80,000 dead.
“We believe in dialogue, we have actually knocked on the door many times and they haven’t responded,” he said.
Ethiopia accuses Eritrea of backing Islamist rebels fighting to overthrow the Somali transitional government, which Ethiopia is helping to prop up. Eritrea denies the accusations.
The African Union and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), a six-nation regional grouping, have also called for sanctions against Asmara in recent months.
“The evidence (of Eritrea’s involvement) is definitive, the need (for sanctions) is undeniable,” Ethiopia’s foreign ministry said in a statement over the weekend.
“Every day the crisis worsens. Neither the region as a whole, nor Somalia in particular, can afford the consequences of failure. Peace and security issues affect domestic as well as regional considerations and all the IGAD states need a solution in Somalia, and quickly.”
Meanwhile, a coalition of Ethiopian opposition parties has presented a common manifesto and said it would field joint candidates in next year’s general elections.
The Forum for Democracy and Dialogue, an amalgam of eight parties, unveiled their 65-page manifesto in Addis Ababa, as it begins a bid to unseat Zenawi, who has been in power since 1991.
“We have agreed to move this country forward. For the last 150 years, political change has only come through the barrel of the gun. We want to break that tradition and change power through the ballot box,” said one of its leaders, Gesachew Shiferaw.
Shiferaw said the manifesto is based on the programmes of all eight parties.
“We hope on that basis to be able to lead in unity.”
The coalition chairman Merara Gudina said the new forum mirrored “Ethiopia’s multi-ethnic composition” with representatives from Tigray to the Somali border.
Zenawi’s former rebel Ethiopian Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) has long been portrayed as dominated by people from the Tigray region since it swept the dictatorship of Mengistu Haile Mariam from power in 1991.
The new coalition has appealed to the government “to negotiate genuinely with us on the modalities of the coming elections” that should be “free, fair and transparent” and monitored by observers from the European union, Merara continued.
The forum, or Medrek as it is known in Amharic, has called for the “release of political prisoners”, notably Birtukan Mideksa, an opposition leader jailed since December, Merara said.
The forum said last month that almost 200 of its supporters had been arrested amid what it called a campaign of government harassment.
The issue currently blocking talks between the government and Medrek is the drawing up of rules governing the conduct of the electoral campaign.
Zenawi’s government, concerned about its image, has put in place mechanisms designed to ensure all parties enjoy equal access to state media and public funding.
Zenawi also said last month that international observers would likely be invited for the polls.
About 200 people were killed when police brutally repressed riots after the opposition refused to accept Zenawi’s victory in the last elections in 2005.