• On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Seyoum was in Baidoa, the seat of the Somali Parliament to meet with President Abdullahi, Prime Minister Nur Hassan ‘Adde’ and the Speaker of the Parliament, Sheikh Adan ‘Madobe’ Mohamed who flew up from Mogadishu. The agenda covered assessment of the current situation as well as the security situation and the path to national reconciliation. There have been recent reports of disagreements over the pace and direction of reconciliation, and on the way forward. Now there is general agreement that the TFG’s progress has been slower than expected, and acceptance that the reconciliation process should be strengthened according to the recommendations of last August’s National Reconciliation Congress at national and regional levels. There will now be specific emphasis on Benadir, all sixteen districts of Mogadishu, the Central regions and on Lower Juba, Kismayu. Local administrations, municipalities and judicial councils will be strengthened or set up. Overall there was agreement on the priorities of reconciliation, on the reorganization of the security institutions, of defence, police and security, and on institutional building for the ministries, including the prime minister’s office and the presidency, and other Transitional Federal institutions. There was also agreement that both MPs and TFG officials should be more accountable to government. Ethiopia is already training significant numbers of police, and Foreign Minister Seyoum assured the President and the Prime Minister that additional numbers would be completed in the shortest possible time. Ethiopia is also sending dozens of experts to assist in the capacity building programme. There was agreement that significant progress needed to be achieved within a short time; hope was expressed that the international community would provide the necessary support as a matter of urgency. The President, Prime Minister and the Speaker all addressed Parliament yesterday; they will be meeting the Council of Ministers today. The Secretary-General’s Special Representative for Somalia, Mr. Ould-Abdallah, who was in Baidoa yesterday attended and also addressed Parliament after meeting government and local leaders during his three day visit.

• In Eritrea, UNMEE peacekeeping forces have continued to regroup in Asmara this week, and are expected to complete their movement of personnel by Sunday. The speed of the operation has been contingent upon UNMEE’s reserves of fuel, now very low. This means UNMEE will have to leave container housing and storage facilities, along with some equipment, at the observation posts, team sites and sector headquarters now being abandoned inside the Temporary Security Zone, to the care of the Eritrean authorities. On Thursday, UNMEE said nearly 800, out of the 1,115 military personnel in Eritrea, had reached Asmara safely. However the safety and security of all UNMEE personnel has yet to be secured. The Mission also continued to report problems at the Senafe checkpoint where some convoys were turned back and eight vehicles were stopped when trying to collect equipment on Wednesday. The possibility of a temporary relocation to Ethiopia is now looking unlikely, and Ethiopia does not anticipate it taking place. After the statement of the Eritrean Representative to the United Nations last week, it has been unclear whether Eritrea would even allow a smooth airlift of UNMEE forces out of Asmara. All the same, the plan by the UN appears to try and ensure that a good number of the troops would leave Eritrea as soon as possible. The Security Council will not be meeting before the beginning of next week. Although UNMEE’s mandate was renewed on January 30 for a further six months, its future will not now be discussed before the next report of the UN Secretary-General, expected to be in two or three weeks.

Ethiopia, as a member of the United Nations and a Party to the Algiers Agreements, continues to deplore Eritrea’s deliberate endangering of the safety and security of UNMEE’s personnel, effectively holding the entire Mission hostage. Ethiopia remains deeply concerned by Eritrea’s action against the United Nations peacekeeping mission which has been and is unprecedented. It threatens the very future of UN peace-keeping operations as well as undermining the authority of the Security Council. There has been no comparable attempt to remove any UN Peacekeepng force in the over fifty years of UN Peace-keeping. It is an exceptionally grave violation of the UN Charter, and creates an extremely dangerous precedent. In addition, the deployment of UNMEE, and the integrity of the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ), are fundamental to the Agreement on Cessation of Hostilities, an agreement signed by Eritrea and Ethiopia in June 2000 and endorsed by the Security Council.The removal of UNMEE and the violation of the integrity of the TSZ put the whole peace process at risk. In the past, the Security Council has repeatedly failed to hold Eritrea responsible for numerous violations of the Agreement. Ethiopia has therefore requested the Security Council to impose sanctions on Eritrea to force it into compliance with the Algiers Agreements and with numerous UN Security Council resolutions.

• On Wednesday, Dr. Kassu Ilala, Minister of Works and Urban Development reiterated Ethiopia’s desire to enhance further its bilateral cooperation with China in areas of construction and infrastructure. Meeting the visiting Chinese Minister for construction, Wang Guangtao, who was on a four day working visit to Ethiopia, Dr. Kassu commended existing friendly ties based on mutual respect. He appreciated the support of the Chinese Government to contractors who had made significant contributions in road construction and infrastructural development. As a priority area for the national building effort, extensive infrastructural development is underway; 70% of the new projects are the responsibility of Chinese companies. Dr. Kassu took the opportunity to invite Chinese contractors to participate in housing development. The Government, he said, would cooperate to encourage Chinese investors interested in railway development as well as housing and road construction. Minister Wang Guangtao assured Minister Kassu of China’s interest in further consolidation of its relations with Ethiopia. He thanked the Government for its support for Chinese companies working in the country. The Chinese delegation also met with the Minister of Mines and Energy, Ato Alemayheu Tegenu. Minister Alemayehu noted that the massive Tekeze hydroelectric project, largely being carried out by the Sinohydro Corporation of China, is due to be completed and start generating power in August this year; Mr. Wang Guangtao stressed that Sinohydro Corporation would finish on schedule. The project was, he said, an exemplary example of coooperation. He said China would consider requests for further cooperation in mine exploration as well as power supply and construction. During his visit, Construction Minister Wang Guangtao had talks with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. The Prime Minister repeated that Ethiopia was interested to have wide-ranging involvement by Chinese companies in the construction of roads and condominiums. The boom in the construction sector is visible across the country and has already generated thousands of new jobs. The Chinese delegation was requested to encourage Chinese companies to take part in the construction of the six-lane Addis Ababa-Adama express way. Other issues discussed in the talks were the implementation of projects being undertaken by the newly organized Ethiopian Housing Construction Corporation, the issue of capacity building and involvement of Chinese companies in different sectors including cement production.

• Foreign Minister Seyoum held talks on Monday with a delegation from Germany, headed by the Deputy Head of the Economic Cooperation and Development standing committee of the German Bundestag. Discussions centered on Ethiopian German economic co-operation, and Minister Seyoum made it clear that he hoped that German assistance to Ethiopia would not be limited to the provision of training but that it should be broadened to include a focus on capacity building in the areas of engineering and technology transfer. Minister Seyoum also briefed the delegation on the current security situation in Somalia and on the present state of the Ethiopia Eritrea dispute and the situation of UNMEE. The delegation had earlier visited development projects being carried out with German assistance. It said it appreciated the direction of Ethiopia’s development and the activities currently under way in health, education and investment sectors. The delegation which includes representatives of the German Church Development Service as well as Members of Parliament has spent the week in Ethiopia. In addition to visiting development projects it is also exchanging views with representatives of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and other partners of the German Church Development Service, and with members of the Ethio-German Parliamentary Friendship Group in the Ethiopian parliament.

• On Monday, an article entitled “Ethiopia’s War on its own” appeared in the Los Angeles Times. Following a depressingly familiar pattern, the article, quoting a single refugee in Kenya, repeated a series of allegations about the Somali Regional State, claiming Ethiopian security forces had been responsible for a series of human rights abuses while its opponents, innocuously described as “separatist rebels” had merely carried out a few “attacks”. Journalist Ronan Farrow made no mention of the way that these “separatists”, of the Ogaden National Liberation Front, had launched a series of terrorist activities, beginning with the deliberate massacre of 74 Chinese and Ethiopian workers, including women and children, (most of them Ogaden Somalis) in April last year, or that their actions have included: the burning of villages, the rape and murder of local people, the murder of local government officials and police and the assassination of local clan elders opposed to them, land mines on roads targeting civilian vehicles, and the burning of trucks to inhibit cross-border trade, grenades thrown into public gatherings and bombs placed in hotels and other public places. Ronan Farrow, who hasn’t been to the region nor even tried to visit it, claimed that the Ethiopian government suppressed news from the area, quoting the expulsion of three New York journalists last year. He didn’t mention the three had been travelling for two weeks with the terrorists when they were detained by security forces. Alleging the government is carrying out a scorched earth policy, Mr. Farrow seems unaware that stability was largely re-established over the area before the end of last year, enabling a free flow of activity to help resolve humanitarian problems in the region: following poor deyr rains and reductions of commercial activity caused by ONLF activities, several hundred thousand people were in need of food aid. Among other errors of commission and omission, Mr. Farrow, who clearly knows nothing of Somali clan politics, failed to mention that the ONLF had been largely quiescent for many years until Eritrea provided a large-scale influx of fighters and weapons eighteen months ago. He also extends his criticisms towards what he calls Ethiopia’s role as a proxy for American interests, claiming, quite inaccurately, that US military aid to Ethiopia “has soared”. He manages to find an (anonymous) Ogadeni refugee to claim that “we hate the USA more than Ethiopia”. Mr. Farrow quotes accusations by US Representative Donald Payne that the Bush administration looks the other way while human rights abuses in Ethiopia worsen.

The mention of Representative Payne is interesting. Rep. Payne has been running an openly anti-Ethiopian government campaign recently on behalf of the Ethiopian opposition in the US. In his attempts to push his controversial HR 2003 bill through Congress, he has been making increasing criticisms of Ethiopia, deliberately ignoring all changes and developments the country has made in recent years. This is now being coupled with open support for Eritrea. In January, Mr. Farrow accompanied Rep. Payne to Asmara, on a four day visit, where Rep. Payne reiterated his support for Eritrea’s aggressive position towards Ethiopia over their common border and joined Eritrea in criticising Ethiopia’s interventon in Somalia. Mr. Farrow, who quoted Rep. Payne approvingly in stressing that nothing should prevent the US from taking a “principled stance on democracy and human rghts issues”, is like Rep. Payne, prepared to totally ignore the appalling human rights record of Eritrea, one of the worst in Africa today. Indeed, three weeks later, Mr. Farrow, ignoring the well-attested atrocities committed by the Eritrean government and those of its terrorist ONLF allies, produced a virtually unsourced attack on Ethiopia for the Los Angeles Times. It is likely to have pleased Rep. Payne.