Ethiopia: Negotiation starts to free kidnapped aid workers

By Tesfa-alem Tekle

September 30,2008 (ADDIS ABABA) — A negotiating team drawn from Ethiopia and neighboring Somalia have started talks to release two foreign aid workers who were abducted last week in the Ethiopia’s Somali region, sources said.

According to local residents, 3 gunmen took hostage the two aid workers, a Japanese female doctor and a Dutch male nurse, both employees of the Paris-based Medicines du Monde (MDM, Doctors of the World), in the remote barren Ogaden region of Fadhigaradle village near borders of Somalia, while they were visiting drought hit areas and then later taken to neighboring Somalia.

Local elders drawn from the Ogaden region, from central Somalia, as well as representatives from the ONLF rebel group, which has condemned the kidnappings, are involved in the talks, the sources said.

The kidnappers, based in Dusamareb, in central Somalia, are demanding money. It was learned.

According to a regional safety report issued by the Ethiopian office of the U.N. Department of Safety and Security, MDM staff members passed an ONLF checkpoint on Sept. 18 while traveling through the Ogaden region.

The representative of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) over the weekend said that the two hostages are safe. But they were frequently being moved around central Somalia.

Relatively it has become quite surprising to the public that the rebel ONLF is involved in such negotiating talks but many Ethiopian officials disagree that this is a simple make-believe drama aimed to reflect a false image of the group to the outside world and they believe the group’s involvement in the kidnapping conspiracy.

In recent months, armed Somali gangs have carried out a number of kidnappings, often targeting foreigners or Somalis working with international organizations to demand ransoms.

(ST)