Stung by their inability to end 15 years of conflict in Somalia, African Union leaders prepare to confront the issue with no clear solution except to recite old appeals and re-emphasise the pressing need for stability for the Horn of African nation. Despite fears of the Somali developments, the leaders meeting at a weekend summit appear unlikely to endorse any new proposal to try to halt the unrest.
Ethiopian forces killed 111 Eritrean-trained and armed insurgents in the north-west of the country, reported the government-owned newspaper Addis Zemen on Wednesday. The insurgents had infiltrated from neighbouring Eritrea on a mission of destabilisation, according to the Amharic-language daily.
Ethiopia on Tuesday claimed it had killed more than 110 rebels sent by arch-foe Horn of Africa neighbour Eritrea to destabilise the country since the beginning of the month. The defence ministry said Ethiopian security forces had killed 111, wounded 18 and captured 107 ”anti-peace forces” operating on Asmara’s behalf in northern Ethiopia since early June.
Somali transitional President Abdullahi Yusuf on Tuesday arrived in Addis Ababa for talks with the African Union, whose plans to deploy peacekeepers in the country face a raft of challenges including opposition from increasing powerful Islamists, officials said.
General John Abizaid, the head of the United States Central Command, held talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on local and international efforts to combat terrorism, state media said on Tuesday. The talks came as Ethiopia faced accusations of deploying its troops inside Somalia to protect the country’s fledgling interim government.
African and Western diplomats were discussing the details of a peacekeeping mission to Somalia, an African Union spokesperson said on Monday, after militias vowing to impose Islamic rule took over the capital. The meeting will not decide when peacekeepers will be deployed because the United Nations Security Council will have to first ease an arms embargo on Somalia.
Dissident factions of two Darfur rebel groups that have rejected a peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region are to sign onto the pact this week, African Union officials said on Wednesday. Splinter wings of the Sudan Liberation Movement and Justice and Equality Movement are to sign a specially prepared annex to the peace deal.
A United Nations Security Council team met on Wednesday with African Union officials to discuss the possible handover to the UN of an AU peacekeeping force in Sudan’s troubled Darfur region. A day after failing to win express Sudanese government approval for the transfer, the UN mission arrived at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.
Dissident Darfur rebels said on Friday they would sign an African Union-mediated peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region and urged hold-outs to join them. Despite missing a Wednesday midnight deadline to agree to the pact or face possible sanctions, they said the AU was preparing an annex to the May 5 accord for them.
A senior Ethiopian health official said on Thursday that there has been a marked increase in HIV/Aids infection among women in the country, with the prevalence rate among sexually active women now standing at 5%. ”Women are vulnerable to the HIV/Aids pandemic due to their low socio-economic status in Ethiopia,” Health Minister Dr Kebede Worku said.
The African Union expressed "deep regret" on Thursday that hold-out Darfur rebel groups had failed to meet a midnight deadline to sign a peace deal for the troubled western Sudanese region. At the same time it held out hope that dissident factions of the two groups would accept the Darfur Peace Agreement.
At least 17 people were killed and 36 injured when a passenger bus plunged into a deep ravine in northern Ethiopia after skidding off a muddy rural road, police said on Wednesday. The vehicle, which was carrying 63 passengers, swerved off the road running from the town of Essie to Baherder at Kelto, about 520km north-east of the capital, late on Tuesday.
Alleged dissidents from a holdout Darfur rebel group may sign a peace pact for the troubled Sudanese region, diplomats said on Wednesday, as an African Union deadline loomed for the deal’s acceptance. A group claiming to represent a splinter faction of the Justice and Equality Movement arrived at AU headquarters in Addis Ababa.
Hours before the expiry of a May 31 deadline by the African Union to Darfur rebel groups still holding out from signing a peace deal, the pan-African body said on Tuesday it was hopeful the insurgents would beat the ultimatum. ”Until the May 31 deadline expires, we are hopeful that the parties that have not signed will sign,” AU Peace and Security Commissioner Said Djinnit said.
At least 42 people were injured when three blasts rocked a town in southern Ethiopia at the weekend in the latest of a series of mystery explosions to have hit the country, police said on Monday. The simultaneous blasts hit a hotel and two restaurants in Jijiga, about 720km south-east of Addis Ababa around 7pm on Saturday.
Six months after suspending aid to Ethiopia on democracy concerns, two of the impoverished nation’s top donors agreed on Friday to put much of that money to education and health projects. The World Bank and Britain said they had redirected a total of more than -million from suspended support to programmes to help the poorest in Ethiopia over the next two years.
An Ethiopian court on Tuesday postponed its verdict in the marathon genocide trial of former dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam until next year, saying it had to consider new defence evidence. After 12 years of hearing testimony and evidence, the court heard that the long-awaited ruling would be delayed until January 23 2007.
Ethiopians are awaiting a verdict in the marathon genocide trial of former dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam, who is accused of a plethora of brutal atrocities during his 17-year regime. Ethiopia’s Federal High Court is expected to deliver its ruling on Tuesday after a more than a decade of what has been one of Africa’s longest criminal proceedings.
The African Union on Monday gave two hold-out Darfur rebel groups a 24-hour deadline to sign a peace deal with Khartoum or face United Nations sanctions. AU commission chairperson Alpha Oumar Konare said the pan-African body would ask the UN Security Council to slap sanctions on the the two groups unless they signed the deal by Tuesday.
Three explosions rocked the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa on Friday afternoon, killing a person and bringing the death toll from a total of nine blasts during the day to at least four, with 41 wounded, police said. At least one person was killed and four were injured in the latest blasts.
At least two people were killed and 21 injured on Friday when four blasts, described by police as "criminal acts", rocked Addis Ababa, the latest in a series of mystery explosions in the country. Two people died and seven were hurt, five seriously and two slightly, when a device exploded at a cafe in the capital’s north-west Mercato district.
The African continent has the world’s highest rate of child labour, with two in five children in sub-Saharan Africa engaged in some form of work, the United Nations Labour Organisation (ILO) said on Thursday. Almost 50-million children in sub-Saharan Africa between the ages of five and 14 work, according to <i>The End of Child Labour: Within Reach</i>, an ILO report released on Thursday.
Ethiopia on Wednesday dismissed rebel threats to foreign energy firms considering work in the country’s restive south-east, saying the area was stable with no risk to potential investment. The information ministry said the warning from the Ogaden National Liberation Front that natural gas exploration in the Ogaden region ”will not be tolerated” was hollow and nothing new.
A rebel group issued a warning on Monday to companies that are looking to develop natural gas fields in a contested area of Ethiopia, saying any investment that benefits the Ethiopian government ”will not be tolerated”. The Ogaden National Liberation Front, which wants an independent state in Ethiopia for ethnic Somalis, said a pipeline ”in what is essentially a combat zone is far from reality”.
The United States will provide an additional -million in humanitarian aid to Ethiopia to alleviate the effects of prolonged drought in the Horn of Africa country. Michael Hess, assistant administrator of the US Agency for International Development (USAID), said on Thursday that the additional funding included -million in food aid and ,3-million in non-food aid.
The African Development Fund (ADF), the soft-loan arm of the African Development Bank, has approved debt relief amounting to ,5-billion to 33 low-income African countries, an ADF statement said on Friday. Thirteen of these countries will receive immediate debt cancellation.
At least six people were killed and dozens wounded when grenades exploded in towns in eastern and western Ethiopia, the latest in a string of mystery blasts in the country, police said on Thursday. Grenades were detonated at two bars and a church in the remote eastern town of Jijiga on Saturday evening.
South African-based railway operator Comazar was declared winner on Thursday of an international tender to administer the 1 000km Ethio-Djibouti railway for 25 years. The line runs from the Ethiopian capital to the small neighbouring country of Djibouti, at the southern entrance to the Red Sea.
Ethiopia on Tuesday accused its bitter rival Eritrea of trying to foment unrest a day after one person was killed and 15 injured in a series of bombings here. ”The wish of the Eritrean government is to see a divided or at least much weakened Ethiopia,” Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said.
A bomb exploded on a packed minibus heading into Ethiopia’s capital on Monday, killing at least one person and wounding several others, police and witnesses said. the vehicle, which was carrying about 10 people into downtown Addis Ababa, was ripped apart in the blast, witnesses said. Ethiopia’s top police official, Demsash Hailu, confirmed the explosion was caused by a bomb.
Calls for abortion laws across Africa to be revised have dominated the first days of a meeting in Ethiopia — the Regional Consultation on Unsafe Abortion in Africa. More than 140 researchers, key government officials and health practitioners from 16 African countries have gathered in Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa.
The African Union has extended the mandate of its peacekeeping mission in the western Sudanese Darfur region by six months, after which it will transfer the operation to the United Nations, a statement issued in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa said.