KHARTOUM: Somalia’s fledgling government accused Ethiopia on Thursday of blocking attempts to further a reconciliation process for the splintered country at a regional summit this week. Information Minister Zakaria Mohamud Abdi said Ethiopia had stepped up an alleged campaign to destabilize its neighbour just as attempts to bring peace to the anarchic country were yielding progress.
“Ethiopia is terrorizing an entire nation, they are actually destabilizing the whole region,” he said in an interview. “Ethiopians must be stopped by the international community.”
Ethiopia denies sowing turmoil in its long-time rival, where fighting between clan-based warlords has turned the country into a major source of instability in the Horn of Africa. Zakaria was speaking on the sidelines of a gathering in the Sudanese capital Khartoum, where seven regional heads of state are due to meet on January 10-11 to discuss topics including Somalia and the war on terror.
The minister said Ethiopia had sent hundreds of troops across the border in the last few weeks to support warlords opposed to Somalia’s Transitional National Government (TNG), fearful that a Kenyan peace initiative could foster reconciliation. “I think they want to destroy the TNG,” he said. “I can’t understand why, this is insane, inhuman.”
Addis Ababa has denied the presence of Ethiopian troops on Somali soil. The TNG of President Abdiqassim Salad Hassan represents the most serious attempt in a decade to rebuild Somalia’s state institutions, but it controls only parts of the capital Mogadishu and pockets of the rest of the country and has been unable to pay civil servants for four months.
Zakaria said Ethiopia had exploited the Sept 11 attacks on the US to intensify its meddling in Somalia, sponsoring warlords who had adopted the war on terror as their latest pretext to fight the TNG.
Regional experts say the warlords hope that accusing the TNG of supporting terrorists will convince the US to intervene on their behalf. “The TNG is the light for Somali people at the end of the tunnel, Ethiopia wants to destroy that small candle, claiming that the government has links with terrorism,” Zakaria said.
The US fears extremists may have used the lawlessness in much of Somalia to cloak their activities. The TNG says there are no terrorist bases to target in Somalia.—Reuters
