Qatar surprised at rift with Ethiopia
By Tesfa-alem Tekle
April 23, 2008 (ADDIS ABABA) — Qatar said on Wednesday it was surprised by Ethiopia’s decision to cut diplomatic ties with the Gulf state, and rejected as unfounded the accusation that it sought to destabilise the Horn of Africa.
The official QNA news agency cited a foreign ministry spokesman as saying Doha was “surprised” by Addis Ababa’s “unfounded and untruthful allegations,” and saw them as “a deliberate attempt to justify its own erroneous policies.”
On Monday, Ethiopia announced it was severing ties with Qatar, accusing the Doha government of supporting armed opposition groups across the Horn of Africa and citing Qatar’s “strong ties” with Ethiopia’s arch foe Eritrea.
QNA quoted the spokesman as calling on Ethiopia “to refrain from implicating Qatar in regional differences,” and adding that “the Ethiopian government made similar allegations in the past, charges to which Qatar preferred not to respond in the hope that such erroneous behaviour might cease.”
On Monday, the Addis Ababa government said in a statement that it had “displayed considerable patience towards Qatar’s attempts to destabilise our sub-region and, in particular, its hostile behaviour towards Ethiopia.
“Qatar has now, however, become a major source of instability in the Horn of Africa and more widely,” it added.
The statement accused Qatar of using its “media outlets” to undermine Ethiopia.
On April 11, the foreign ministry in Addis Ababa sharply criticised the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera for broadcasting TV reports on Ethiopia’s restive Ogaden region.
Ethiopia imposed a news blackout on the vast area which has an ethnic Somali majority and has seen a long-running separatist rebellion by the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
“It is hard to ignore the fact that Al-Jazeera broadcasts out of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is a close ally of Eritrea. It would be totally unrealistic to imagine that any Al-Jazeera programme on Ethiopia could be anything other than seriously biased,” the Addis Ababa government said.
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Ezeyakum
Qatar surprised at rift with Ethiopia
And the horn Africa terrorist state, which funded by more than $500 millions/year while the hardwoking taxpayer are loosing their mortgages, has responded by the following:
Garowe Online (Garowe)
A witness named Omar told Garowe Online that he was inside al Hidaya Mosque in Huriwa district when Ethiopian soldiers stormed inside on Sunday.
“The first person they [Ethiopian soldiers] killed was Sheikh Said Yahya, the Imam [prayer leader],” Omar said, adding that the late Imam opened the mosque door after the soldiers knocked.
“I stood above 11 dead bodies, some with their throat slit and others shot to death,” said the witness describing the gruesome scene. Of the 11 dead victims, nine were regular congregants at the mosque and reportedly were part of the Tabliiq wing of Sunni Islam.
A source who took part in Monday’s effort to bury the dead victims privately told Garowe Online that some of the victims had their hands cut off and their backs broken.
Amnesty International
Amnesty International today called on the Ethiopian military to release some 41 children held after a raid on Mogadishu’s Al Hidya mosque on 19 April 2008, which left 21 people dead.
“The safety and welfare of the children, some as young as nine years old, must be paramount for all parties,” said Amnesty International.
Witnesses have told Amnesty International that Ethiopian forces would only release the children from their military base in north Mogadishu “once they had been investigated” and “if they were not terrorists”. While Amnesty International has received reports that a small number of children were released yesterday, the majority are still being held by Ethiopian forces.
Amnesty International strongly condemns the targeted killing of civilians in the raid. Eleven of the 21 dead were killed inside the mosque, including the Iman Sheik Saiid Yahya, Sheik Abdullah Mohamud and several Tabliq Islamic scholars. Eye-witnesses report that those killed inside the mosque were unarmed civilians taking no active part in hostilities. Seven of the 21 were reported to have died after their throats were cut – a form of extra-judicial execution practised by Ethiopian forces in Somalia. A spokesman for the Ethiopian government has denied the involvement of Ethiopian troops in these killings.
Al-Jazeera claims that they report News at it happen but I think sometimes Al-Jazeera is also biased when it comes to the situation of black Arabs.
If such inhumane crimes are committed in occupied Palestine; Al-Jazeera and the rest of all Arab Medias will broadcast days and nights until the Arab league call for the emergency meeting.
Not a single muslim intellectual or a single Sudanese or Egyptian intellectual has predicted that one day the Abraha Al-Habashi will rise after 1500 years defeated by the raining altuyoor.
People in Khartoum, had demonstrated against silly cartoons which never harm or kill a single muslim soul. If those demonstrators consider themselves devoted Muslims why they don’t demonstrate now for oil sale embargo against the Habashi Zionist that occupied the western Somalia and invaded the main land Somalia?
The day the neo-Abraha control the black gold of occupied Western Somalia, Sudan and Egypt will get the same treatment like Eritrea.
Supplying cheap oil to the Habashi Zionist is like the pigeon hatching a pigeon-hawks egg.