By C. Bryson Hull
Friday, April 13, 2007
NAIROBI, April 13 (Reuters) - East African states backed the Somali government and its ally Ethiopia on Friday, siding with Addis Ababa in a rift with Eritrea that is being played out through Somalia's crisis.
Diplomats meeting in Nairobi under the auspices of the seven-member Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD) also urged more financial support for African Union peacekeepers and an expeditious national reconciliation congress in Somalia.
Kenya, Uganda, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Sudan and Somalia make up the east African bloc.
But the meeting of foreign ministers quickly became a forum for the festering feud between Ethiopia and Eritrea, rivals still bitter over their 1998-2000 border war and locked in what many see as a proxy war in Somalia.
Somalia and ally Ethiopia accused Eritrea of undermining Somalia's interim government by supplying weapons to insurgents involved in some of the worst violence in Mogadishu in 15 years.
At least 1,000 people were killed and thousands fled the Somali capital after Ethiopian and Somali forces two weeks ago launched an offensive to wipe out insurgents drawn from a dominant Mogadishu clan and a former militant Islamist movement.
Eritrea blamed the United States and Ethiopia for their "irresponsible external interference" under the guise of fighting terrorism in Somalia.
A communique after the meeting expressed appreciation to Ethiopia "for all the sacrifices it has made to promote the common position of IGAD," a reference diplomats said was to Ethiopia's military backing for the Somali government.
It also condemned "all forces that undermine (the Somali) government and attempt to prevent it from carrying out its responsibilities".
Eritrea was not named as one of those forces but Ethiopia had earlier pointed an accusing finger at it's longtime foe.
"Eritrea is trying to scupper what we are doing," Ethiopian State Minister for Foreign Affairs Tekeda Alemu told the meeting. "Eritrea is not only visibly supporting and promoting terrorism in our region, it is actively engaged in terrorism."
Several United Nations reports on arms embargo violations in Somalia have said Eritrea provided weapons and training to the former Islamic Courts Union (ICU), which Washington accuses of working with al Qaeda.
"FACTUALLY UNTENABLE"
Eritrea denies that, but regional experts say the U.N. reports are mostly accurate.
"One can easily understand the destructive role the government of Eritrea is playing ... by giving all material and other support first to the ICU and now to its remnants," Somali Foreign Affairs Minister Ismail Hurre Buba told the meeting.
The Islamist movement ruled southern Somalia for the last half of 2006, until Ethiopian and Somali troops beat them in a two-week New Years' war with U.S. backing and tactical support.
"The portrayal of developments in Somalia in terms of the global war on terrorism is factually untenable and politically imprudent," said Andeab Gebremeskel, Eritrea's foreign affairs director for Africa, Asia and the Pacific.
Kenyan Foreign Minister Raphael Tuju, whose country chairs IGAD, afterward said the bloc had "no appetite" to mediate Eritrea and Ethiopia's feud despite the problems it has caused in the region and within IGAD.
"The problem between Ethiopia and Eritrea is like a problem between brothers. Our hands are pretty full at the moment so it is not one of the things we have an appetite to get into."
Source: Reuters, April 13, 2007