- Title: [SW News]ENA/Reuters/Qaran) Arta Faction Should Stop
Creating Artificial Enemies...
- Posted by/on:[AMJ][Friday, January 12, 2001]
TNG
should stop creating artificial enemies for purely political
purposes,
to
cover internal weaknesses :minister
Addis
Ababa, Jan. 12 (ENA)--The transitional national government of
Somalia (TNG) cannot be allowed to entertain the illusion that those
who have legitimate national security concerns could be forced and
bulldozed into silence by the threats of negative international
opinion, foreign minister Seyoum Mesfin said.
In
a letter he wrote to the Security Council of the United Nations on
Wednesday Seyoum said the illusion in Somalia is potentially
dangerous and could lead to the TNG to be more and more reckless.
The
approach being used by the TNG to subdue those who have not accepted
its authority within the country is now being used against the
neighbors of Somalia that have raised some concerns with regard to
its policy, he said.
The
minister said the statement by the Prime Minister of the TNG from
Djibouti is designed to make Ethiopia a scapegoat for the
difficulties faced by the TNG inside the country.
The
TNG is hoping that by blaming Ethiopia for its internal weakness,
money would be flowing into its coffer and win greater support from
the international community, he said.
"That
the TNG might also be trying to drive a wedge between Ethiopia and
some sections of the international community should not be ruled
out", the minister said, adding that "this is very
dangerous and bears all the hallmarks of a sinister motive."
The
TNG should be told to resist the temptation of creating artificial
enemies for purely political purposes and with the view to making up
for their internal weaknesses, he said.
The
entire diplomatic activity of the TNG has been geared towards
soliciting money and support for vanquishing those who have not yet
joined the Arta process, but who happen to have established peace
and security in their respective regions, he said.
He
said the 10-year-old conflict in Somalia could not be solved through
reliance solely on support from out side.
Ethiopia
believes that there is still great hope for genuine national
reconciliation in Somalia and establishing a broad-based government
in that country, the minister said.
He
said "but this can be done only when the TNG ceases trying to
create artificial enemies …a necessity felt by the TNG because of
its outside orientation in search for support of all sorts,
including support for political legitimacy."
The
TNG should return in orientation back to Somalia and focus on what
needs to be done domestically, he said.
He
said, "We feel that all should contribute their level best
towards maintaining the momentum created by the Arta conference
including the TNG and those who were not part of the Arta process
have great responsibility in this regard."
The
TNG could not bring peace and stability in that country by securing
the submission of those who were not part of the Arta process
through whatever means including force and cultivating international
legitimacy and recognition, he said.
It
is only through dialogue that national reconciliation could be
achieved in Somalia, he said.
The
minister said the officials of the TNG will not advance the interest
of Somalia by attacking those who refuse to encourage them to follow
a path which will be unlikely to lead either to national
reconciliation in Somalia or peace in that country.
The
draft presidential statement on Somalia issued on Thursday by the
Security Council of the United Nations underlined that
"Somalia and its territory should not be used to
undermine the stability in the sub region", was also the
position of Ethiopia with regard to that country, minister Seyoum
said.
(END)
____________________________________________________________________________________
SOMALIA(Arta Faction) ACCUSES ETHIOPIA OF BACKING BREAKAWAY
STATE.
By Irwin Arieff
UNITED NATIONS, Jan 12 (Reuters) - Somalia ratcheted
up its rhetoric against Ethiopia on Friday, accusing its Horn of
Africa neighbor of actively working to create a breakaway state in
its richest agricultural region. Prime Minister Ali Khalif Galaid
accused Ethiopian soldiers of occupying towns in southwestern
Somalia, detaining and intimidating Somali nationals and arming
anti-government groups in a drive to undermine international efforts
to rebuild Somalia after a decade of chaos. Asked how the situation
differed from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait, which prompted a
U.S.-led coalition to invade Iraq and free Kuwait, Galaid said,
"There is no interest in the stock exchanges of the world for
camels." "Ethiopia now is actively involved in the
creation of an administrative state, something called
the Southwest State," Galaid told a
news conference a day after briefing the U.N. Security Council on
Somalia's efforts to form a government.
"It is the simple most dangerous thing for us, and for
the whole region," he said. Ethiopian ambassador Abdulmejid
Hussein, in a telephone interview, flatly denied Galaid's
allegations, saying the problem in the region was
"terrorists" using southwestern Somalia to launch attacks
into Ethiopia. Somalia, he said, "is trying to whip up enmity
between our two peoples, but they will not succeed. We only wish
well for Somalia but we cannot relinquish the responsibilities to
our people," he said. That meant Ethiopia "reserves the
right to hot pursuit if there are terrorist movements - and there
are - which cross the border into Ethiopia from Somalia. There is no
(government) control whatsoever over there."
NATION OF FIEFDOMS
Somalia has been without a central government since
1991 when various factions joined forces to oust dictator Mohamed
Siad Barre. Warlords fought each other, carving up the nation into
fiefdoms backed by armed militia. Galaid, who heads a transitional
national government set up in November, reiterated his strong
opposition to ending a U.N. arms embargo against Ethiopia and
Eritrea - another Horn of Africa neighbor, as the United States
wants to do next week. A border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea
ended last month with the signing of a peace agreement, though both
sides are still skirmishing over the accord's implementation.
Relations between Somalia and Ethiopia have been strained since the
1970s, when Somalia launched a war designed to capture the Ogaden
region of south-eastern Ethiopia. Somalia was defeated in 1978 by
the Ethiopian armed forces supported by the then Soviet Union. The
U.N. Security Council on Thursday backed plans for a peace-building
mission in Somalia to prevent it from sliding back into the anarchy
that prevailed there in the early 1990s. The 15-member body also
insisted countries refrain from interfering militarily in Somalia,
whose territory "should not be used to undermine the stability
in the subregion." Galaid said Somali warlords who did not
subscribe to the peace process and "have no support inside
Somalia" had been meeting for some 50 days in the Ethiopian
town of Godey to plan the new breakaway state. He said the
Southwestern State would cover about a third of its territory,
including its most fertile region, which produces bananas, citrus
fruit, corn, beef and edible oils for both export and domestic use.
In the past four to five days, elders from Somalia had been brought
by Ethiopian soldiers to Godey against their will, Galaid said,
expressing concern they would be forced to sign a statement backing
the new state.
____________________________________________________________________________________
Somali president laments lack of support in
face of "Ethiopian interference"
BBC Monitoring Service - United Kingdom, Jan 12, 2001
Text of report by Somali newspaper Qaran web site on
11 January Abdiqasim Salad Hasan, the interim Somali president, has
accused Ethiopia of not respecting the recent bilateral agreement
aimed at resolving the mutual mistrust between the two countries.
The president said this yesterday when he addressed a group of
somali "intellectuals" in Mogadishu. President Salad said
Ethiopia was flooding Somalia with arms and troops under the pretext
of establishing contacts with faction
leaders. The president expressed disappointment that
nobody has told Ethiopia to stop interfering in the internal affairs
of Somalia. "Even our African and Arab brothers have not told
Ethiopia to stop what it is doing," President Salad said. He
commended the residents of Hiiraan Region [southcentral Somalia] for
rescuing the Speaker of the transitional assembly when he was
attacked in Tayeeglow last week. The president reiterated that the
Somali people would not be cowed by what he termed the conspiracy
against his government.
Source: Qaran web site, Mogadishu, in Somali
11 Jan 01 /BBC Monitoring/ (c).
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