Word: ethiopia
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...fabrications. Eventually the Foreign Ministry issued a splenetic communique calling the stories "a shockingly big lie" that betrayed the tendency of "high-ranking officials of the Reagen (sic) Administration to go berserk once again on their usually familiar anti-Ethiopian campaign of denigration, disinformation and falsehood." Finally, last week, Ethiopia's Soviet-backed leader, Lieut. Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, conceded that the mass exodus had indeed taken place--at the command of a misguided local official. The offender would be punished, he said, and the refugees welcomed back to Ibnet...
Almost forgotten amid the word games was the plight of the evicted and of the 8 million others in drought- and famine-plagued Ethiopia whose lives are hanging by a thread. The Ibnet episode highlighted the ways in which political issues have complicated and sometimes obscured a humanitarian problem. It also deepened the unease of Western governments and relief agencies faced with a leadership in Addis Ababa that accepts their aid while reviling their principles. "There is a growing awareness in the relief community of just how ruthless the Mengistu government is," said Chris Cartter of Boston-based Grassroots International...
...government has mounted a major military offensive against the guerrillas of the Tigre People's Liberation Front. The attack, according to diplomats in Addis Ababa, may be aimed at severing the pipeline that brings in supplies, including some military hardware, from Sudan to the northern rebel-held regions of Ethiopia. But the offensive has also hampered relief convoys that have been secretly ferrying food from Sudan to at least 160,000 starving people. Because many aid trucks are avoiding the most dangerous areas, villagers in the Central Highlands, where the famine is particularly acute, are now cut off from regular...
...like the regime," says a senior State Department official. "It's an abomination. But we must deal with the emergency." Not long ago, indeed, the U.S., which has been the most generous donor of famine assistance (more than $300 million since last October), lifted restrictions on development aid to Ethiopia...
Even so, said Kurt Jansson, the U.N. Assistant Secretary-General in charge of emergency operations in Ethiopia, after inspecting Ibnet, the evacuation was carried out with "too much haste and inadequate preparation." At week's end relief workers reported that at least 30,000 refugees were "missing" and still presumed to be on the road. For half of them, warned M. Peter McPherson, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, the walk could amount to a "death sentence...