Ethiopian rebels warn foreign firms against oil exploration

By Alem-tesfa Tekle

September 16, 2009 (ADDIS ABABA) – Ethiopia’s Ogaden rebels warned international oil firms that they would not allow oil exploration in the Ethioia’s Somali region, a large state along the Somali border.

The fresh warning comes after an Ethiopian newspaper; the Reporter, recently publishes that a Malaysia’s oil company, Petronas, resumed drilling in the remote region late last month.

“No business should be conducted in Ogaden, until there is a political solution to the conflict,” the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) said today in a statement released on Wednesday.

We “will not be responsible for any collateral damages that occur from its engagements with the Ethiopian army,” the ONLF said, accusing oil companies of “disinheriting the Ogaden people of their natural resources.”

In a similar statement issued last June the ONLF said that oil firms had cleared some 1,600 square kilometers, displacing locals and destroying vegetation.

The rebel group had attacked on April 24, 2007 a Chinese-owned oil exploration field in eastern Ethiopia. The attack killed 65 Ethiopians and nine Chinese.

Addis Abab government says it has no to intention to negotiate with ethnic Somali’s rebels who have been fighting since 1984 complaining from marginalization and seeking the independence of their arid region in southeastern Ethiopia which is a home to about 4 million people.

(ST)