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From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Sep 14 2010 - 15:53:53 EDT
http://af.reuters.com/article/eritreaNews/idAFLDE68D21E20100914?pageNumber=2&virtualBrandChannel=0
Ethiopia rebels deny standoff with Somaliland forces
Tue Sep 14, 2010 6:50pm GMT
Print | Single Page[-] Text [+] "There is politics and Ethiopian
favour-seeking motives behind the spread of this rumour," Ogaden
Online said.
The ONLF wants independence for Ethiopia's mainly ethnic-Somali Ogaden
region and has warned international oil and gas companies to stay away
or face attack.
Firms including Petronas and the Vancouver-based Africa Oil
Corporation are exploring the Ogaden for potential oil and gas
reserves.
"This is the largest number of insurgents to enter the country," the
commander of Somaliland's army, Nouh Ismail Tani, told Reuters. "Their
destination was Ethiopia but they were using our country as a crossing
point. A joint operation is going smoothly. I hope it will not take
more than 3 days."
Somaliland officials said the men had guns and were carrying 64 rocket
launchers. Some of them had Eritrean currency and documents that
proved they were trained in Eritrea, police commander Elmi Roble Furre
said.
Eritrea has long denied financing rebel groups in Ethiopia and
Somalia. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a 1998-2000 border war that
killed at least 70,000 people, and relations between the two have been
bitter since.
The United Nations sanctioned Eritrea in December, accusing it of
financing Somalia's Islamist al Shabaab rebels. Eritrea denies that.
Ethiopian forces launched an assault against the ONLF -- who have been
fighting for more than 20 years -- after a 2007 attack on an oil
exploration field owned by a subsidiary of China's Sinopec Corp,
Asia's biggest refinery.
(Additional reporting by Husein Ali Noor; Editing by Mark Heinrich)
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