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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Fri Jun 10 2011 - 17:23:21 EDT
Ethiopia signs deal to purchase 200 tanks from Ukraine-official
Fri Jun 10, 2011 11:52am GMT
By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA, June 10 (Reuters) - Ethiopia's government has signed a deal to
buy more than 200 tanks at a cost of $100 million from Ukraine's state-owned
military hardware export firm Ukrspetsexport, a Ukrainian official said on
Friday.
Ukrainian media said the subject of the deal could be Soviet-designed T-72
tanks.
"The deal was signed three days ago. It is one of the biggest deals for the
past 15 years," said the official, speaking in Kiev and declining to be
named.
The agreement comes weeks after the Horn of Africa nation signed a deal to
buy unmanned aerial vehicles from Israeli company BlueBird Aero Systems for
surveillance operations, according to separate Ukrainian media reports.
Authorities in Addis Ababa were not available for comment on either case.
Addis Ababa has been at loggerheads with Eritrea since their 1998-2000
border war which killed around 80,000 people, and both sides have amassed
large amounts of troops along their disputed frontier ever since.
Ethiopia is also wary of its porous border with Somalia, which it invaded in
late 2006 to topple an Islamist movement in the capital Mogadishu. The
intervention sparked an Islamist insurgency which still rages although
Ethiopian troops pulled out in early 2009. (Additional reporting by Pavel
Polityuk in Kiev; editing by James Macharia and Philippa Fletcher)
C Thomson Reuters 2011 All rights reserved
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