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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Aug 06 2011 - 17:27:35 EDT
Eritrea: We are not the 'bad boy'
By WALTER MENYA wmenya@ke.nationmedia.com
Posted Saturday, August 6 2011 at 22:00
IN SUMMARY
. Having been boxed into a corner, Asmara responds by reactivating
its Igad membership which it had frozen
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Three events in quick succession have forced Eritrea to go on the defensive
with its envoy in Nairobi declaring , "we have never been the bad boy".
Despite the firm declaration of innocence by Asmara, the recent report by
the UN Security Monitoring Group and assertions by leaders of the
Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) provided ammunition for
warring Eritrea and Ethiopia to renew their rivalry.
The two have escalated the row, with Asmara stating that the government of
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was behind the smear campaign while Ethiopia has
countered by asking its neighbour to own up and behave.
Kenya finds itself the battleground as the two protagonists fire salvos at
each other. That Asmara has been boxed into a corner is not in doubt.
Security measures
President Mwai Kibaki, as the chairman of Igad, set the ball rolling when he
told his counterparts in the region to enhance security measures to curb the
increasing destabilisation activities associated with Eritrea.
Even before Asmara could fully digest this information, the UN Security
Monitoring Group unleashed a much harsher assessment of the country's
complicity with armed groups in Somalia, Djibouti and Ethiopia.
The UN report published "documentary evidence of Eritrean payments to a
number of individuals with links to al Shabaab" through its embassy in
Nairobi.
The mission is accused of making routine cash payments to members of Somali
armed groups, but the administration of President Isaias Afewerki has in the
past officially denied that it has ever "transferred cash to armed
opposition group leaders or supporters," the UN reported.
The report also accuses Eritrea of plotting to bomb the African Union
headquarters in Addis Ababa. Asmara responded by reactivating its Igad
membership which it had frozen in December 2006.
But Eritrean ambassador to Nairobi Beyene Russom denies that his government
reactivated its membership in Igad because of the looming backlash from the
international community over its alleged dalliance with al Shabaab.
The decision to return to the Igad fold, he said, was necessitated by recent
changes in the region, including the creation of the new state of South
Sudan and the growing humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa.
"Four-and-a-half years since we froze our membership, there has been the
birth of a new country, South Sudan. We are very friendly with both Juba and
Khartoum. We also have very good diplomatic relations with Kenya and Uganda,
and we are solving the stage-managed and that never-was-border issue created
as a problem with Djibouti bilaterally. We think it's high time now to
reactivate our membership, believing that we can work for the peace and
security of the region inside Igad again," the envoy said.
Kenya and Ethiopia, as are the rest of Igad members, are positive about
Eritrea's return.
In Nairobi, acting Foreign Affairs permanent secretary Patrick Wamoto told
the Sunday Nation that Kenya would not oppose Eritrea's return to the Igad
bloc.
The Ethiopian embassy, too, said Addis Ababa would not object. "They are
welcome. It is out of their own free will to sit in Igad," said Fiseha
Shawel, charge d'affaires at the Ethiopian mission in Nairobi.
Mr Russom told the Sunday Nation that Eritrea had been compelled to freeze
its membership because Igad did not stop, or at least condemn, Ethiopia's
invasion of Somalia, which was against a UN Security Council Resolution 1725
(2006).
One of the key points of Resolution 1725 was a call for an all-inclusive
Somali dialogue for peace and reconciliation. At the same time, it sought to
prevent frontline states from intervening militarily in Somalia.
But just two weeks after the resolution was passed, Ethiopia invaded Somalia
to fight the Islamic Courts Union leader Sheikh Sharif Hassan (whose
military wing was al Shabaab).
Eritrea claims that the invasion by Ethiopia had "some sort of blessing from
Igad" because the regional bloc did not condemn it.
"We tabled our opposition but to no avail. So we thought that in addition to
Igad's indolence towards the Ethiopian invasion of Eritrea in 1998 and in
2000, we could not work inside Igad because it was not working for one of
its holy agendas - peace and security of the region," the envoy said.
Eritrea also vehemently denies UN and Igad allegations that it is supporting
terrorism.
Smear campaign
The allegations have escalated the diplomatic row, with Asmara asserting
that Addis Ababa was behind the smear campaign. Prme Minister Meles'
government countered by saying that Ethiopia was not to blame.
Addis Ababa has often been uncomfortable with Eritrea over its alleged close
ties with Ethiopian rebel groups Oromo Liberation Front and the Ogaden
National Liberation Front. The two groups have been fighting the Ethiopian
government.
The two neighbours have also been at loggerheads over border demarcation
since signing a peace agreement in 2000.
Mr Russom wants the region and the international community to put pressure
on Ethiopia to fully implement the verdict of the Ethiopia-Eritrea Border
Commission that is agreed to be final and binding.
Eritrean ambassador to Kenya Beyene Russom at his office in Nairobi during
an interview.
Eritrean ambassador to Kenya Beyene Russom at his office in Nairobi during
an interview.
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