Norway will reduce its direct aid to Ethiopia by about one-third after Addis Ababa expelled six Norwegian diplomats, Development Aid Minister Erik Solheim said on Tuesday, though he said it was for purely logistical reasons.
”We want to have a good relationship with Ethiopia and we have no intention whatsoever to step up this conflict,” Solheim told foreign correspondents in Oslo.
But, he said, ”when you have nine diplomats in an embassy and then six are asked to leave, the three remaining diplomats cannot handle the same amount of aid as the original nine”.
He added: ”If that was the case, the nine together must have been extremely lazy if three can do the job of nine.”
Solheim said ”some 30-million kroner” ($5,28-million) of direct aid could disappear, out of a total of 100-million kroner initially earmarked for this year.
On August 27, Oslo said Ethiopia had asked it to withdraw six of its diplomats in Addis Ababa by September 15 due to its ”dissatisfaction” with Norway’s policies in the Horn of Africa.
According to Solheim, Addis Ababa had accused Oslo of favouring its arch-foe Eritrea in regional mediation efforts.
”The accusations that the Ethiopians have made … we find unacceptable. We cannot see that Norway has misbehaved in any sense,” he said.
”Norway is a strong believer in dialogue,” he added, underlining that his country — which has open dialogues with North Korea, Iran, Hamas, Hezbollah and the Tamil Tigers — should also be able to have an open dialogue with Eritrea.
Solheim said the lion’s share of Norwegian aid to Ethiopia is channelled through the United Nations and other NGOs and that this aid will not be reduced.
Last year, that indirect aid totalled 268-million kroner. — Sapa-AFP