|
|
|
|
|
UN and
Ethiopia agree on food deliveries to Ogaden region |
By Jeffrey Gettleman
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
LAMU, Kenya:
United Nations
officials and the Ethiopian government
appear to have reached an agreement allowing
emergency food aid into an embattled area
that the Ethiopian military has been
blockading for several weeks, both sides
said Wednesday. But Ethiopian government
officials expelled the Red Cross from the
same area after accusing its workers of
being spies.
Nur Abdi Mohammed, a government spokesman,
said food deliveries would soon begin to
most parts of the Ogaden, an eastern region
that the Ethiopian military has recently
sealed off in what appears to be an effort
to squeeze a growing rebel movement.
"The food distribution has started from the
center to different areas," Mohammed said.
"I think it will reach most places soon. But
where there is no security, there will not
be deliveries."
Peter Smerdon, a spokesman for the United
Nations World Food Program, said that UN
officials had been meeting with the
Ethiopian government for several weeks about
access for food aid and that assessment
teams had now reached most parts of the
conflict region.
"The food is still not there in all the
zones, but there is a process under way,"
Smerdon said. "We are working with Ethiopian
officials and others on exactly how the food
will be dispatched so it arrives with the
people who monitor the distribution."
Smerdon said that with food prices rapidly
rising, local markets empty and the flood
season due to begin next month, there could
be a "humanitarian crisis" in some areas
unless the military lifted the restrictions
on food aid and commercial traffic soon.
The Ogaden is one of the poorest parts of
one of the poorest countries in the world,
and it is also the site of an intense
insurgency and counterinsurgency. According
to human rights groups and firsthand
accounts, Ethiopian troops have gang-raped
women, burned down villages and tortured
civilians.
Several former administrators from the area
and a recently defected member of Parliament
have accused the Ethiopian military and its
proxy militias of skimming food aid and
using a UN polio-eradication program to
funnel money to their fighters. The
Ethiopian government has denied these
charges and said it was the Ogaden National
Liberation Front, one of the most active of
Ethiopia's many separatist groups, that was
stealing food aid and abusing the
population. The Ethiopian government has
also accused the Ogaden rebels of getting
arms and training from Eritrea, Ethiopia's
neighbor and a bitter enemy.
Western diplomats and lawmakers in the U.S.
Congress have expressed increasing concern
about Ethiopia's human rights record.
Several measures are moving through the
House and the Senate that would place strict
conditions on assistance to Ethiopia, which
receives nearly half a billion dollars in
American aid each year.
Western diplomats in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's
capital, said their biggest issue right now
was the military blockade, which they said
was putting hundreds of thousands of
impoverished nomads at risk of starvation.
Several humanitarian officials have said
that they need to temper their criticisms or
not speak publicly, or that their
organizations might be permanently blocked
from the area.
On Tuesday, the Somali regional government,
which oversees the Ogaden, expelled the Red
Cross, accusing its workers of providing
weapons, money and sensitive information to
the rebels.
"They were spies," Mohammed said. "They were
following regional officials and relaying
information to the rebels. We warned them to
stop and they didn't."
Red Cross officials declined to comment,
saying they were still negotiating with the
government in the hopes of working out a way
to stay. The regional government has given
the Red Cross, which runs water and
livestock projects in the Ogaden, seven days
to leave the area. Red Cross projects in
other parts of the country will not be
affected.
Copyright © 2007 The International Herald Tribune
|
|
|
|
|
