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http://www.presstv.ir/detail/232489.html
Monday Mar 19, 201207:13 PM GM
‘Sanctions on Eritrea politically motivated'
An Eritrean ambassador says UN-led sanctions on the country are a product
of big nations and media institutions mainly driven by corporate interests.
Press TV has conducted an interview with Tesfa-Michael Gerahtu, Ambassador
to the UK/Ireland, to further discuss the issue.
The following is a transcription of the interview.
*Press TV:* Eritrea has been in the news for a variety of reasons,
certainly in the Western press because ‘you’re supporting terrorist
movements, you’re supporting attacks on tourists’. Time, I guess, to give
your version since we hardly hear about the Eritrean version of events in
the mainstream media.
*Gerahtu:* There is pattern of behavior that has developed in the last 10,
11 years, and that’s whenever we want to do something or whenever there is
a certain failure, take Eritrea as a victim, fabricate stories and blame
anything and everything on Eritrea.
So, the recent allegations about Eritrea supporting the Afra Liberation
Movement to do a tax on the tourist are really nonsense.
Number one, our track record in fighting terrorism is very clear. We fought
against regional terrorism from 1991 up to 1997. And being a secular
country, we are totally against extremism and terrorism.
And the second important thing is this is an internal situation, an
internal condition. They have been fighting against the Ethiopian
government for quite a long time.
And third is, in order to divert attention, Ethiopia has always been
blaming, bombing and many other things that have been said before.
*Press TV:* Well, it’s Addis Ababa’s view that gets a hearing in the state
department in Washington. But you have hosted a high delegation from Asmara
here in London recently. It’s a bit strange, one would think, Britain a
strong ally of the United States which is backing militants that are
opposed to your country. How come Britain is seemingly keen to make some
kind of ties with Eritrea?
*Gerahtu:* Well, in the first place, all these fabrication stories about
Somalia are very much known to those who accuse us more than anybody else.
But to come back to the point that you mentioned, yes, there was a
high-level delegation composed of the Minister of Foreign Affairs Osman
Saleh and the Presidential advisor, Mr. Yemane Ghebreab, who visited the UK
at the invitation of the FCO.
In the last three, four years we have been working very hard to see how we
could raise our visibility and promote constructive engagement to the UK
government.
*Press TV:* You see, a cynic might say this sudden interest is not so much
due to you being able to address the balance about what you feel is unfair
coverage of Eritrea and more to do with a lot of exciting business
interests in Eritrea at the moment. I understand inward investment is on
the increase?
*Gerahtu:* Generally, let’s be honest with you, in the last ten years the
whole effort by different corners, and by raising the hostilities against
Eritrea which is unwarranted, the whole idea was the Eritrean economy was
to collapse in the next two, three years.
In 2010, in September, the ICG, the International Crisis Group, issued a
similar report talking about the failure of the Eritrean economy, Eritrea
moving towards a failed state and by 2010 the whole Eritrean economy is
going to collapse.
But what we saw at the beginning of 2011 was a different orientation.
*Press TV:* How did they get it so wrong? You’re not seriously saying there
are agents of US-backed Ethiopia in these institutions? These are supposed
to be cold-hearted economists assessing the figures.
*Gerahtu:* To go into the cracks of the matter, as one of the investors in
the mining sector in Eritrea said during the investment meeting that was
organized by Mr. Henry Bellingham, “if you want to know Eritrea, you can
never know Eritrea from your office, from the internet. You need to go and
find [this order]…”
*Press TV:* That’s an advertisement for the Eritrean tourism industry.
*Gerahtu:* And I will add to that the perceived image created in the West
especially in the ideological apparatus -- in particular in the media
institutions - it’s completely opposite to the real image justified in
Eritrea. And that’s the problem with many quarters, they fail to understand
Eritrea.
But most of the time for geopolitical reasons, for other interests
especially economic interests, there is a deliberate move, a deliberate
effort to tarnish the image of Eritrea.
This is a country, as I said before there is a different history, that now
is a nation-building process that is based on sound experiences that
focuses on owning our own decisions, promoting self-finance without
resorting to aid, and creating of a national capacity that favors foreign
direct investment.
*Press TV:* Well the geopolitics, I suppose in Africa itself is changing
recently. I mean, we’ve got the fallout of the Libyan intervention,
thousands of weapons and so forth; we’ve got threats of famine towards
Marley and guns from the Libyan intervention. We’ve got all these different
things happening, is there no prospect of any kind of talks with Ethiopia?
Or if anything, is Ethiopia becoming more strident in its attacks on
Eritrea?
*Gerahtu:* In the first place, Eritrea has a very clear position, history
and proxies as far as regional peace, regional integration is concerned
because we are people destined to live together, not for now only,
tomorrow, the day after tomorrow and for generations to come. Our joint
survival depends on the harmonization of our efforts complimenting each
other.
But the question when it comes to Ethiopia is, Ethiopia has been the main
reason for the instability of the whole of the African regime because there
has been an inherent established thinking and practice based on the
ideology of aggression in the politics of hegemony which has been seen in
all the successive regimes in Ethiopia including the present one.
The border war and the present stance of the Ethiopian government not to
withdraw, not to honor the international agreement made by the independent
boundary commission in the higher court and its continued occupation of
sovereign territories until now in open defiance to international law is a
reflection of its ideology and politics.
Therefore, the only way that we could move forward towards peace security
is for Ethiopia to show mutual respect and compliance with international
law. And there are a lot of issues that we could discuss for our joint
survival.
*Press TV:* Well, Washington and Brussels, though, keep pointing to human
rights as the main reason for their interest in supporting Ethiopia, as it
were. Did you detect any difference? Did the foreign ministry who was
visiting the EU detect any differences, or the general assembly, about the
sanctions regime? -Because there are sanctions on Eritrea.
*Gerahtu:* Well, as we said several times, the sanctions are unjust,
illegal and irrational.
If we take as a cut point December 19, 2009, when the sanctions were
imposed, in the following two years Eritrea complied with the resolutions.
We started a mediation with Djibouti and we withdrew our troops. We never
supplied any arms finance. We didn’t do it before, but in those two years
after sanctions were imposed…
*Press TV:* So where did all the rumors come from?
*Gerahtu:* It’s a way of trying to intimidate and nail down Eritrea for
various means.
I’ve written an article under the title, “How fake crisis are made and how
a fake crisis was created to tarnish the image of Eritrea.” -And which
Eritrea was accused of giving a submarine base to Iran, which doesn’t exist
in this world. No such story exists in this world.
That was reproduced again and again by BBC, by CNN, and they tried to make
it a big story. And even an MP raised it in the parliament that Eritrea has
given a submarine base to Iran, this is a dangerous situation in the Red
Sea basin because Israel also has a military base in one of the islands of
Eritrea.
All these fake stories! You could count hundreds and hundreds of fake
stories made against Eritrea, and everybody knows that they are not true.
When Ethiopia invaded Somalia at the end of 2006, they tried to create a
myth about that invasion. The single thing that was fabricated was that
Eritrea has sent 2,000 Special Forces to Somalia to assist the hedonist
Islamic courts.
And there was a reason for that, to divert attention from the main issue of
the invasion but, at the same time also, create a certain context: anybody
who says Eritrea is there, Eritrea and Ethiopia are at odds, and therefore
Eritrea is sending 2,000 troops.
So every person is forced to go to a conclusion which says Eritrea has
started a proxy war in Somalia. Where are these 2,000 soldiers?
A fabrication after fabrication, lies after lies, to tarnish the image of
Eritrea but, at the same time, to divert attention from the sense of the
problems in the region.
*Press TV:* News stories like the one you mentioned can, of course, kick
off unforeseen consequences. How prepared are the Eritrean government to
respond to that? -Because a news story like that can presumably catch wild
fire and lead to consequences on the ground, perhaps.
*Gerahtu:* Well, as I said, we are living in a dangerous time. One of the
important dimensions that has to be looked at objectively and critically is
how the ideological apparatus of these big nations functions in order to
completely destroy the image of countries or groups or people or whatever.
And the media institutions are part of the ideological apparatus of the
states that this stage of development is mainly driven by corporate
interests.
*Press TV:* What is the state of business of Eritrea?
*Gerahtu:* By 2010, we achieved significant growth in the country. This has
nothing to do with the booming mining sector now. Of course, we started to
export gold in 2011 which we have to see its dividend in profits maybe in
the near future. This is something home grown.
*Press TV:* Well, we’ll keep a close look on Eritrea on this show even if
the mainstream media takes another kind of look on the country.
GMA/JR
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Received on Mon Mar 19 2012 - 23:30:12 EDT
