Page 94 - Dinq 215 December 2020_Neat

Continued from page 89 The TPLF dominated political life in Ethiopia for more
than three decades before current Prime Minister
the WHO since 2017, was a member of the TPLF’s Abiy Ahmed, who hails from the Oromo ethnic
powerful Executive Committee. He was also Ethio- group, came to power in 2018.
pia’s health minister from 2005 to 2012 and foreign
affairs minister from 2012 to 2016.
The Oromo is the largest ethnic tribe in Ethiopia,
representing around 34.9% of the country’s popula-
The official, who was not allowed to publicly discuss tion of 114.9 million, while the Tigray account for
the matter, told Anadolu Agency on the condition of only 7.3%.
anonymity that the Ethiopian government had been
well aware of Tedros’s activities since the beginning
of the National Defense Force’s law enforcement op- Sudan forces seize large weapons haul near
eration against the TPLF, which is entrenched in the Ethiopia (Source: Aljazeera)
northern Tigray region.
Sudan’s Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have seized
“Tedros had been lobbying the UN agencies to exert significant amounts of weapons, ammunition and
pressure on the Ethiopian government to uncondi- military equipment on its eastern border with Ethio-
tionally stop its military action against the TPLF,” he pia.
noted. “He was relentlessly demonizing us.”
The RSF made the announcement on Saturday of
The official added that Tedros had also been solicit- the seizure in Kassala state, the official SUNA news
ing Egyptian military support for the TPLF. agency reported.

“To ally with Egypt, which had been bent on destabi- The seized weapons included a number of mortar
lizing Ethiopia for decades and aborting construction rounds and assault weapons, said the report.
of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD), is
tantamount to treason,” he said.
“The weapons were seized as part of the operations
carried out by the security forces these days on the
According to the official, who attended many high- border line in anticipation of any security threat,” it
profile government briefings on the matter, Tedros said.
was also active in eastern Africa.
The RSF did not specify the threat to security. How-
“He repeatedly called top officials of many neighbor- ever, fighting has raged for three weeks in neigh-
ing nations and pressured them to provide military bouring Ethiopia between federal troops and forces
and diplomatic support to the TPLF,” he noted, add- of the northern Tigray region.
ing those countries informed the Ethiopian govern-
ment.
An estimated 40,000 Tigrayan refugees have fled
Ethiopia into Sudan overwhelming local authorities
“Those countries, which we cannot name, told us with the UN warning of a humanitarian disaster.
they declined Tedros’s requests, saying the conflict
was an internal Ethiopian affair and they stand with
us,” he said. Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed announced the
end of military operations in Tigray on Saturday af-
ter the army said it was in “full control” of the re-
The official said from what they have gathered, gional capital, Mekelle.
Tedros was serving as a “full-time diplomat of the
TPLF, breaching the duties of the director-general of
the WHO.” But hours later, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front
(TPLF) said the heavily armed Tigrayan forces would
keep fighting the federal government. Some experts
“We are readying a protest note to the WHO and have warned of a drawn-out conflict that could de-
other relevant bodies,” the official added. stabilise the wider Horn of Africa region.

Ethiopia has launched what it describes as a law en-
forcement operation in Tigray after forces of the
TPLF attacked the northern command of the federal
army stationed across the Tigray region, killing sol-
diers and looting military assets.

94 “ኢትዮጵያ ለዘላለም ትኑር ” ድንቅ መጽሔት - ታሕሳስ 2013