Ethiopia

The president of Ethiopia’s remote Afar region on Wednesday denied Eritrean accusations that local separatist rebels were responsible for abducting a British embassy group there for almost a fortnight. ”There are no rebel movements operating in the Afar region. Our soldiers monitor the area daily,” Ismail Ali Sero told Agence France-Presse by telephone.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi urged the kidnappers of five Europeans and eight locals on Monday to give them up, saying the hostages were not the original target of an attack in the remote north. ”I do not believe these people were targeted. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Meles said in his first public comments on the kidnap that took place 11 days ago.

Five Europeans and eight locals kidnapped in remote north Ethiopia are ”unharmed and safe” in the hands of Afar separatist rebels holding them over the border in Eritrea, an Afar leader said on Friday. The hostages were seized by an armed band eight days ago during a tour of the Afar region.

Fifteen foreigners, including 11 French nationals, a Briton and an Italian, are believed to have been kidnapped in a remote and inhospitable area of Ethiopia where separatist rebels operate. ”A kidnapping or kidnappings did take place,” French Ambassador Stephane Gompertz told Reuters.

Somali President Abdullahi Yusuf Ahmed on Monday said a deployment of Ugandan troops to Somalia, the first members of an 8 000-strong African Union peacekeeping force, should begin this week. "The AU is coming, the Ugandans are coming. My estimation is that they should be in Somalia for the first week of next month [which begins Thursday]," he said.

Former United States president Jimmy Carter on Wednesday announced distribution of thousands of insecticide-treated mosquito nets in impoverished Ethiopia, in a drive that could save up to 100 000 lives annually. The distribution is part of a partnership with Addis Ababa to distribute 20-million nets by July in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation.

Ethiopia foiled an Eritrean-backed attack that had targeted the African Union summit attended by about 40 heads of states in Addis Ababa this week, an Ethiopian police statement said on Friday. The two Horn of Africa neighbours are embroiled in a dispute over a border ruling by an independent boundary commission.

Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin expressed confidence on Wednesday that a long-awaited African Union peacekeeping force would be deployed to war-torn Somalia within the month. A day after AU leaders wrapped up a summit in Addis Ababa, Mesfin told reporters the 8 000-strong mission would replace Ethiopian troops due to return home shortly.

An African Union summit on Tuesday discussed raising thousands more troops for a peacekeeping force in Somalia after defusing a potentially damaging row over Sudan. The force, essential to avoid a dangerous vacuum when Ethiopian troops leave Somalia within weeks, needs 4 000 more troops to bring it up to projected strength of almost 8 000.

South African President Thabo Mbeki pledged on Monday to ensure the first-ever World Cup to be staged on African soil will benefit the whole of the world’s poorest continent. ”We have to make absolutely certain that 2010 will benefit Africa and the African diaspora,” Mbeki said in a speech at the African Union summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Sudan lost the leadership of the African Union for a second time after the pan-African group on Monday awarded the rotating chair to Ghana because of widespread outrage over continuing bloodshed in Darfur. Alpha Oumar Konare, the AU’s top diplomat, told reporters Ghanaian President John Kufuor would become chairperson. ”By consensus it is President Kufuor.”

The United States is ready to contribute air support to an African Union peacekeeping force in Somalia, a leading official said on Monday. US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer said that she had made the offer during talks on the sidelines of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa with the head of the AU Commission, Alpha Oumar Konare.

The head of the African Union urged member countries late on Thursday to speedily supply troops to a peacekeeping mission to Somalia, ahead of a high-level AU summit next week. The AU is trying to cobble together an 8 000-strong force to prevent a possible security vacuum in the Horn of Africa nation as Ethiopian troops are set to withdraw.

A diplomatic deadlock is expected at a meeting of African leaders in Ethiopia over whether Sudan, accused of war crimes in its Darfur region, will become the African Union (AU) chair as promised a year ago. With around 7 000 AU troops struggling to stem the violence in remote Darfur and AU mediation of peace talks, hosts Sudan were denied the chairmanship.

Abdulrahman Abdulqadir was watching his favourite football team Arsenal on satellite television when the seven gunmen burst into his shack in Somalia’s capital Mogadishu. ”They were shouting ‘This is not allowed’, ‘This is against Islam’,” said the 18-year-old electrical engineering student.

An African Union mission to Somalia recommended on Friday that it send peacekeepers for six months before handing over to the United Nations to tame a nation in chaos for 16 years. Diplomats see international peacekeepers as the only way to stabilise Somalia once Ethiopian troops return home.

The African Union’s main security forum will hold a special session at its headquarters in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on Friday to discuss a proposed peacekeeping force for Somalia, a statement said. The Peace and Security Council meeting will include a debate on a new report into the situation in the volatile Horn of Africa state.

An Ethiopian court sentenced former Marxist ruler Mengistu Haile Mariam to life in prison for genocide on Thursday, but the former dictator is exiled, safe from the punishment in Zimbabwe. After a 12-year trial, Mengistu was found guilty in absentia of killing thousands of people during a 17-year reign that began in 1974.