Happy Ethiopian New year 2004

Taken from The Africa Report

On September 12, Ethiopians will be celebrating the dawn of a new year – 2004. For the initiated this may sound anomalous but Ethiopia, a country of more than 80 million people, is behind time... literally.

Photo/Reuters

The Horn of Africa country uses its own calendar and for them it is still 2003 which began on September 11, 2010 of the Gregorian calendar. There is a 276 year difference between the Ethiopic and Coptic calendars.

In spite of this, the Ethiopic calendar is closely associated with the rules and the different calculations influenced by the Coptic church and the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahido church.

Based on the ancient Coptic calendar, the Ethiopian Calendar is seven to eight years behind the Gregorian calendar, owing to alternate calculations in determining the date of the  annunciation of the birth of Jesus Christ.

Ethiopia’s New Year (Enkutatash) means the "gift of jewels".

The Enkutatash tradition dates back to the time when the famous Queen of Sheba returned from her expensive jaunt to visit King Solomon in Jerusalem.

Her chiefs are believed to have welcomed her by showering her with gifts of jewels or inku. But Enkutatash is not exclusively a religious holiday.

The spring festival, which has been celebrated since early times, also symbolises the end of the rainy season accompanied by dancing and singing a cross the green countryside.

It is also the season for exchanging formal New Year greetings and cards among the urban sophisticated as well as the traditional bouquet of flowers.

Confusion

Ethiopia’s use of a different calendar has always confused foreigners visiting the country.

Keeping appointments with locals is more often than not a nightmare for foreign visitors, who are always encouraged to make it clear when they are making appointments with locals on whether they are referring to local or European time.

For example, Europeans who unknowingly fix appointments for 9 am are surprised when their Ethiopian counterparts turn up at 9 pm.

Ethiopians who usually don’t use the ante meridian (am) and post meridian (pm) timing begin their day at 01 am and end at 12 pm, which is sunset local time.

Wishes

With the New Year approaching, Ethiopians have already shifted into a festive mood.

The dawn of the New Year, no matter how tough the situation in the country might be, has some power to make people believe that things will turn out for the better. For many Ethiopians, it is a time when new resolutions are considered.

And when the New Year arrives, people seem to wish to change not only things they have control over, but also things out of the sphere of their reach.

In the meantime, many Ethiopians have been busy shopping ahead of the celebrations. In Addis Ababa, home to around five million people, the celebrations are already under way as shown by the busy streets.

And for most Ethiopians, Christian and Muslim alike, it is a must to slaughter a sheep or goat. It is also a time when the Ethiopian traditional chicken stew is most popular in kitchens cross the country.

Ethiopians spend their new year, mainly at home partaking in traditional food and drink. It is usually the women’s task to prepare food and drinks while men are tasked with the  urchasing of goats or sheep as well as providing money to buy gifts for the holiday.

Men as heads of families are also supposed to slaughter the sheep or goat early in the morning of the New Year.

More wishes

The climax of the New Year celebration is when most Ethiopians finally make resolutions for the year ahead. It is common place for people to resolve to stop indulging in unhealthy habits such as smoking or drinking beer.

Mesfin Mekonnen (36), a father of one hopes to stop smoking next year. “It is really my hope to completely stop smoking in the New Year,” he says. “I promised myself, my wife and son. So 2004 will be a good year for my family.”

Like Mekonnen, Tizita Tesema (27) who works for a private company, 2004 will be a special year. “I am preparing to get married. That is one of my plans for the New Year,” Tesema  aid.

But while many resolutions are made, most are broken as Ethiopians usually never live up to them.

Mekuria Berhanu says he has failed to stop smoking and chewing Khat (a popular stimulant leaf in East Africa and Yemen) for the past two years despite resolving to stop for the past two years. “I still keep smoking and chewing Khat despite my resolutions to stop. However, I am determined to stop in 2004,” Berhanu said.

Ethiopians in the Diaspora are also returning home to celebrate the New Year.

Letter from Obang Metho, to South Sudan President

Congratulatory Letter  to President Salva Kiir Mayardit and the people of the Republic of South Sudan.

H.E. Salva Kiir Mayardit
President of the Republic of South Sudan
Juba, Southern Sudan

Dear President Salva Kiir Mayardit and the people of Southern Sudan,

I want to extend my warmest greetings and congratulations to the people of the now independent Republic of South Sudan on the birth of your new nation on July 9, 2011 after years of oppression, war, death and the dispersion of the people to all parts of the world. With great regret, I had to decline the wonderful invitation to attend the celebration in Juba this past July; but yet, I still wanted to share with you my great joy at this remarkable achievement after over thirty years of civil war.

Now, the sounds of laughter, the tears of joy, the prayers of thanksgiving and the happy singing and dancing to the accompaniment of African drums, have all subsided; however, on this two-month anniversary of your new-found freedom, I want to congratulate you from your family on the other side of the river. 

We Ethiopians know of the great suffering you, our Southern Sudanese brothers and sisters, have gone through over the past years. Whatever happens to you, whether joy or sorrow, affects us on the other side of the river and the same is true of you. Just because a national boundary splits us; our deep bonds of our shared humanity cannot be broken and now, with your independence, we are rejoicing with you that this victory for human dignity is finally yours. 

Growing up as a boy in Gambella, the arbitrary border line drawn by the British made little difference; I had one foot firmly planted in Sudan and one foot firmly planted in Ethiopia. My family was on both sides and I have lived in both places. Eventually, Gambella became a sanctuary for those on the Sudan side during the civil war and when under threat in Ethiopia, like during the 2003 genocide of the Anuak in Gambella, nearly 10,000 Anuak found sanctuary in southern Sudan when fled as refugees for safety. When food was more plentiful on one side and lacking on the other; the people simply crossed over a manmade boundary that could not separate the people from each other. We drank the same water from the Akobo, Gilo, Alwro and Opeano rivers that flow to the Sobat River from the western Ethiopia. The Sobat’s discharge is considerable; at its confluence with the White Nile just south of Malakal, the Sobat accounts for half the White Nile’s water. We walked the same land and we were all one people and still are.

Right after the British left in 1955, the southern Sudanese people ended up in the hands of the northern government of Sudan, who attempted to brutally dominate over all the people of the south; forcing assimilation into another culture and religion while exploiting the people and the land. The thirst for freedom grew as the injustice deepened. The southern Sudanese simply sought to live like everyone else.

I remember hearing stories about the Anyanya (also Anya-Nya) the southern Sudanese separatist rebel army formed during the First Sudanese Civil War (1955-1972). I heard about Joseph Otheao, an Anuak leader from southern Sudan who was one of the first to take up the struggle to resist the oppression; but unfortunately, he gave his life for the struggle we are now celebrating together. Some people claim that had he not been killed, southern Sudan may have become a country long ago. Some of my family members, who acted as a mentor to me in my youth, joined the resistance movement and became very involved. Sadly, they also were among those who lost their lives. Tens of thousands of men lost their lives.

The Addis Ababa Agreement in March 1972 brought a ceasefire, but when the rebels went back home to start new lives, the northern Sudanese Arabs did not abide by the agreement and the oppression continued. This failure was the reason Dr. John Garang went back to the bush to create the SPLA in 1983.During some of the most difficult years, the SPLA found a safe-haven in Gambella. Nearly half a million refugees who fled from the war-stricken south, went through Gambella on their way to Ethiopia and Kenya. Many lived in refugee camps in Ethiopia where they lived for years. Others made Gambella their permanent home and are still there. Gambella was your base to fight for your rights.

For me, the horror, suffering and countless deaths of not just the soldiers, but also civilian refugees, many of whom were as young as I, was an unimaginable human tragedy I will never forget. Though I was young at the time, I learned that those who were fighting and dying were doing so because of the lack of dignity, freedom, equality, justice and opportunity. I saw many of the young people, come through our land; barely able to walk or move for lack of food and strength. Their bodies looked like living twigs.Others, including many elders, could not make it and Gambella was where many died as they fell over on the road; never rising up again. Hundreds of thousands came, but a great many of them did not make it; however, the people of Gambella tried to share food and shelter with them.

The young and older men with guns did not follow the Southern Sudanese refugees to the refugees’ camps, but demonstrated their commitment to justice and freedom by returning to Sudan to claim their God-given rights. Many of them died. Some of these were my own relatives who were never seen again after returning to Sudan to fight. Even though they lived on the other side of the river in Gambella, Ethiopia, they saw the struggle for human rights in Sudan as their own.

As we continue to celebrate your nation’s new independence; it also is a time of commemoration for the two million Southern Sudanese; both civilians and those fighting in the bush, who all perished. They did not dance side by side with others in joyous celebration of their hard-fought for battle. They were not present to hear the sound of laughter return to the land. They were not present to see the answer to their prayers; yet, what began in silence many years ago has now been revealed to the world as many outside of Sudan joined in the struggle for the liberation of the Southern Sudanese and now are sharing in your joy.

The birth of a new country is like the beginning of life for a newborn child. It is a tremendous challenge and responsibility to raise a child to live up to its potential. Neither is it easy to establish a new country to live up to its potential. It will require faith, wisdom, determination, commitment and sacrifice. People know this new country is among the poorest countries in the world; however, with God’s help, you can overcome this obstacle for God has blessed your soil with fertility, provided to you rivers of abundant water and endowed the land with plentiful resources. You are not living in a desert, but in a rich land with oil, water, agricultural land and many other resources. You are people of great skill, intelligence, faith, beauty and strength. Now you must become a country of people who can demonstrate to the world how to care about the well being of others; for how the most vulnerable are treated in any country, will tell you how well that country is doing.

When you were oppressed and denied your God-given rights by the north, you were lumped together as one people; not as tribes unless it was to exploit tribal differences in order to weaken all of you through “divide and conquer” strategies. You suffered and died together and now you must nurture this new child at this most fragile time of your existence. The future of this new country belongs to all of you and you can nurture it by recognizing and embracing the humanity in every member.

I encourage all the beautiful people of southern Sudan the Dinkas, Nuers, Anuaks, Shilluks, Equatorians, Latukas, Taposas, Turkanas, Moru, Madi, Bari, Acholi, Zande and other people of the entire southern Sudan to stand together to live up to your responsibility to generations who will come after you. Show to the world your uniqueness and how you are committed to creating a healthy and great nation that puts humanity before ethnicity or any other differences because God, our creator, breathed his divine breath into every human being He created. Because of it, each of us has worth, dignity and deserves universal human rights. To the extent you uphold these God-given truths will determine the ultimate success of your nation. I believe you can do it as Dr. John Garang dreamed that one day you will be free!

Guard your new nation; protecting it from outside external forces that seek to destroy, to divide or to exploit the country in the same way that predators seek vulnerable victims or as hawks wait for weakened prey. The only way to prevent such vulnerability is by vigilantly guarding truth, morality, unity, justice, equality and the rule of law.

Do not fall into the traps of neighboring regimes that divide the country by ethnicity and put their own ethnic group and personal self-interests at the top at the expense of the nation. Please take care to not fall into the trap of ethnic favoritism because it will greatly endanger what you have achieved at such a great cost. Be wary about having relationships with these kinds of authoritarian regimes that claim to fight for freedom when they were rebels; but instead, after years of iron-fisted rule, they have failed to bring peace, stability, harmony, democracy and the rule of law into their country and have pro-actively undermined peace in the entire region.

Do not forget that those leaders, who came into power claiming to be ridding their country of dictatorship, but then became the same and even now still refuse to leave office. They become one-party states, rig elections, arrest opposition members, suppress the media and freedom of expression, exploit natural assets, bring deeper levels of poverty and violate the human rights of the people. They pretend to be fighting for the people but instead bring misery as they become dictators for life. 

The leaders of the Republic of South Sudan can take an exemplary role in defying these examples by respecting term limits, creating an independent judiciary, an independent military, an independent election board, strong local governments that can represent the interests of the people, by empowering strong civic institutions to hold leaders accountable and by respecting the rule of law as being above all the people; including themselves. By doing so, it could impact Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa and all of Africa!

As you build a strong and productive country; look nearby; thinking always of how in this global world, one’s relationships with neighbors can either contribute or sabotage to what you have and hope to  achieve. We live in the neighborhood of the Horn of Africa. What kind of neighbors do we want?

If we want to enhance trade, industry, business, transportation networks, access to markets, security, medical services, banking and finance, education and regional development; we must build a neighborhood where we see each other has fully human and create institutions to protect the rights of all; including those with whom we “do business.”

Think about easing obstacles to economic growth and trade by creating more open borders, trade agreements and interconnected roads, railways and even using the rivers for transport as we build greater cooperation within the greater Horn of Africa; reaching from Juba to Addis Ababa; from Khartoum to Kampala; from Asmara to Bujumbara; from Kinshasa to Kigali; from Mogadishu to Dar es Salaam; from Djibouti to Nairobi and beyond!

Can you imagine a Horn of Africa or East Africa where the boundaries of our rivers or ruthless leaders, with their own ulterior motives, do not make us enemies? As you work to build this beautiful country, can you envision the creation of such a region where humanity would come before ethnicity; where people would see themselves as one people—coming from the tribe of human beings rather than from the tribe of one’s own ethnicity, nation or some other distinction?

What would happen if we created a culture where we would care about the well being, rights and opportunities of our neighbors as ourselves; realizing that our own freedom is protected by protecting the freedom of others? As an Ethiopian from Gambella who has joined with the greater family of Ethiopians in our own struggle for freedom, we hope that you can continue to be an example to us of building enduring peace, freedom and stability as you create a government of the people.

As the beautiful and proud Ethiopians now are rising up to demand a government of, for and by the people; it may only be a matter of time before you will see us celebrating ourselves; with tears of joy, songs of justice, dances of victory and hearts of thankfulness. When we finally achieve this end, the union of the people of the region will no longer be impossible.   

I have no doubt that you are ready to make your country proud and help us create a condition that will bring a lasting change to our entire region. You are the greatest source of hope for East Africa’s future. I felt this after meeting with President Salva Kiir in Washington DC this 2011. So, I can say with confidence that the peaceful East Africa’s future starts now!

In closing, I again congratulate you for your new country. Nurture and protect it; always knowing that we, the people of Ethiopia, are your relatives on the other side of the river and are ready to embrace a new future where we can live in harmony together.

May God bless the new Republic of South Sudan!

Sincerely yours,

Obang Metho,

Executive Director of SMNE

910- 17th St. NW, Suite 419

Washington, DC 20006 USA

Phone 202 725-1616

Email: Obang@solidaritymovement.org

Website: www.solidaritymovement.org

Ethiopian Police Arrest Actor Debebe Over Alleged Links to Banned Group

By William Davison - Sep 9, 2011 9:06 AM GMT
From Bloomberg

Ethiopian authorities arrested actor Debebe Eshetu on allegations he has links to the banned Ginbot 7 group, said Shimeles Kemal, minister of state in the Communications Ministry.

After being “closely” monitored, Debebe was detained yesterday by federal police and intelligence officials, Shimeles said in a phone interview today from Addis Ababa, the capital. He is being held at the Maekalawi prison and will be brought before court within 48 hours of his arrest, Shimeles said. The court may grant a further 28 days for investigation before charges are brought under the country’s anti-terror laws.

In 2005, Debebe was charged with treason following a disputed election and sentenced to life in prison, according to the state-owned Ethiopia Radio and Television Agency’s website. His request for a pardon was granted by the government, the agency said. Debebe’s latest arrest is on charges of “plotting to carry out a terrorist attack,” ERTA said.

Ginbot 7 is led by Berhanu Nega, who was elected mayor of Addis Ababa in 2005. He was also imprisoned for plotting to overthrow the government and fled to the U.S. to set up the organization after being pardoned in 2007.

The group is banned because it has “openly declared” violence to achieve its objective and also “resorts to terror activity,” Shimeles said. Berhanu is a fugitive from a death sentence, he said.

Ginbot 7’s primary mission is for political authority to be “assumed through peaceful and democratic process based on the free will and choice of citizens of the country,” according to the group’s website.

Earlier this week, the government charged two Swedish reporters and two ethnic-Somali rebels with terror offences after they were detained in July in the restive Ogaden region. Five others, including three Ethiopian journalists, were also charged under the country’s anti-terror laws for involvement in a separate plot.

Debebe has acted in movies including the 1973 action film Shaft in Africa and Una Stagione all-Inferno in 1970, according to the Internet Movie Database.

To contact the reporter on this story: William Davison in Addis Ababa via Nairobi atpmrichardson@bloomberg.net.

Horn of Africa's geopolitical shake up to start ?

By T, Blogger of De Birhan Blogspot

4-5-2011

From the news of famine and hunger, the Horn of Africa is seemingly shifting into a news of geopolitical shake up that could result in regime changes or endless political conflicts that scales up the crisis of Darfur. The 'regional stability' that has been built by four tyrannical regimes of Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Somalia is now coming out of its closet. It is now being publicly told that Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia and Bashir of Sudan have behind the scenes their enmities broiling since some years now. Sudan itself is yet unstable as the issue of the oil rich region of Abeyi is yet unresolved and new conflicts are escalating in South Blue Nile State bordering Ethiopia and South Kordofan.

1. The first cause of the shake up is likely to emerge from the clashes that just flared up in Sudan’s Blue Nile State.The Blue Nile State is located in the southern eastern part of the Sudan. It borders Ethiopia to the east and southeast, Upper Nile State to the west and south, and Sinnar State in the north. Its capital is Al-Damazin with the distance of 550 Km. from Khartoum through paved road. The state covers an area of approximately 38,500 km2 and state authorities estimate its population to be around 850,000.

According to

Osman Hummaida, Executive Director of

African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACJPS), this was the record of what happened in the region :

"On the 28th and 29th of August, the Sudanese ruling National Congress Party (NCP) moved significant military forces---comprised of Popular Defense Forces (PDF), national security, and Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF)---with heavy military equipment into Blue Nile state. [ ...]

"On September 1st at 11:00 PM the joint forces of SAF and the PDF opened fire on a three-car SPLM convey carrying a delegation out of Al Damazein at the town’s southern checkpoint. The fire was returned and fighting moved inside the town to the areas of Al Nahda, the crops market, the industrial area and the nearby NCP military headquarters.

"Later the same night, the popular militia, brought from Khartoum by aircraft, attacked the SPLM residential area in Al Mustshareen sector and open fire on the house of Governor Malik Agar, killing members of his guards and arresting others. Witnesses say that the Sudanese government forces fired on anyone that appeared to be affiliated with the SPLM and arrested some others.

"Heavy military equipment from the North has been distributed inside the civilians sectors in the town including in Hai Alganes where witnesses say they saw five tanks and three military landcruisers with doshka guns mounted to them. Witnesses said that around 30 civilians were killed as a result of the fighting and many others were injured.

"The NCP and SPLM have suffered more than 200 fatalities and approximately 500 more were injured in the fighting. Following the initial fighting, the SPLM is in control of Albao, Kurmuk and Gisaan and the rest of the state remains under NCP control.

"The fighting has caused around 50,000 civilians---mostly women, children, and elderly men---to flee Al Damazein and Al Rusairis towns into Sennar state. The Northern military forces have closed the main road linking Blue Nile to Sennar, causing those fleeing the areas of fighting to have to take more difficult roads impacted by the rainy season.

"On 2 September, Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir declared a state of emergency in Blue Nile and suspended the application of the interim constitution there. A series of presidential orders were issued, including one removing the elected governor Malik Agar and installing a military governor to replace him. Far from protecting civilians, the state of emergency allows the Northern militias and the SAF to arrest and try anyone suspected of affiliation with the SPLM. In this context, it is possible that anyone who is not a member of NCP may be targeted for arrest and summary trial.

"On 3 September, aircraft continued to bomb SPLM areas. The main water reservoir in Al Damazein was destroyed in the bombardment, possibly in a deliberate attempt to deprive the population of this essential resource. About 75 bodies have been confirmed to be present in the Al Damazein morgue. The hospital has declared an emergency. Clashes have continued in the Hai Alzira area. The NCP has called all remaining civilians in Al Damazein and Al Rusairis to gather inside the military headquarters as a safe area.

On the other hand, the Sudanese Government accued the rebel Group led by Agar as the first attackers.According to an Al Jazeera report,

"Al-Sowarmy Khalid Saad, a Sudanese army spokesman, said SPLM forces attacked Sudan's army in and around al-Damazin, the state capital, late on Thursday.Khartoum also said it had dismissed the state governor, who is a member of the SPLM's northern branch, and the SPLM condemned the decision to fire the governor. The army responded and was now in control, he said.Malik Agar, Blue Nile's governor, told the Reuters news agency before the decision to relieve him of his post was announced, that "The Sudanese army started the attack on our positions".Similar clashes and mutual accusations about who was to blame have led to an escalation in violence in South Kordofan, another state in the north that is on the southern border. Thousands previously fled violence in another hotspot, Abyei.

Malik Agar Eyre

Malik Agar was the commander of a section of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) military forces along the Sudanese-Ethiopian border south of the Blue Nile to Geissan.

He was elected governor of Blue Nile State in the Republic of the Sudan in April 2010. In February 2011 Malik Agar also became chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (northern sector), the part of the SPLM that operates in northern Sudan. The SPLM-NS became a separate political party when Southern Sudan seceded from the Republic of Sudan in July 2011. On 2 September, Agar was deposed as governor on the orders of President Omar al-Bashir. He fled to the southern part of the state and is reportedly planning a counterattack. He has warned that the Sudan–SPLM conflict may ignite a wider Sudanese civil war, sources report.

Yasir Arman

Yasir Arman, the secretary-general of the SPLM-North is also one of the big men that are speaking for an all out support from the international community to SPLM North and the Blue Nile state. Yasir is known for his long standing support of South Sudan's independence and dissenting views from Khartoum.

Another yet unfounded cause but that not agree has to do with the growing relationships of ex-military personnel of Khartoum and SPLM North. According to sources there is a strong relationship between former close military personnel of Bashir and his opposition building up.One of them is Major General Salah Gosh.Salah Gosh served as a director-general of Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) and the President's Advisor for several years until Al-Bashir sacked him in April 2011.

Although Gosh has been sacked as other generals and later arrested , the linkage and relationship they have built with the oppositions is likely to be the cause of the coup attempt by Bashir on Malik Agar.

The U.N. refugee agency says thousands of people are believed to be fleeing to Ethiopia to escape fighting in Sudan’s Blue Nile state.The situation in the Blue Nile State is also considered to have the hands of South Sudan and Ethiopia, which is on the process of building a huge dam on the Blue Nile River.

2. The second source of the tension is the recent Wikileaks reports that came out public. The leaked information reveals that the Ethiopian Prime Minister,Meles Zenawi, who is the manifested friend of Sudanese President , Omar Al Bashir , did advise visiting US authorities that they topple the later's regime.

This is how the Sudan Tribune reported it in detail. September 3, 2011 (WASHINGTON) – The Ethiopian Prime minister Meles Zenawi told the US administration that toppling the government led by Sudanese president Omer Hassan al-Bashir would be the ideal scenario for Washington, according to a leaked diplomatic cable.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi

The January 30, 2009 note released by Wikileaks, an anti-secrecy website, detailed discussions that took place between Zenawi and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Phil Carter with the presence of the Director of Sudan Programs Group (SPG) at the US State Department Tim Shortley.

Focus of the talks was on the widely expected issuance of an arrest warrant against Bashir by the International Criminal Court (ICC) on charges of war crimes he allegedly committed in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.

The Sudanese leader was officially charged a little over a month after this meeting took place on seven counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The more serious counts of genocide were only added a year later after appeal by the ICC prosecutors. Zenawi told the US delegation that the warrant could encourage someone in Khartoum to stage a coup but said that success of such an attempt would be nearly zero due to the close connections and mutual support for one another among senior NCP officials which would suppress any coup attempt.

“If Bashir remains in power, either because no such coup attempt is made or an attempt fails, the indictment will leave the Bashir regime a wounded animal that is more desperate than ever,” the cable quoted Zenawi as saying.The Ethiopian Premier agreed with assertions made by US acting Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs that Khartoum’s actions seem to undermine their own long-term interests.

However, Zenawi also argued that the ruling party in Sudan is disappointed over US refusal to normalise ties despite signing the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended more than two decades of civil war with the South.At the time, Washington promised Khartoum that it will normalise ties as a reward. However, the conflict in Darfur made the US hesitant to do so amid intense domestic pressure to take action that would reverse the growing humanitarian crisis in Sudan’s western region.

“While the [Government of Sudan] GoS thought that they had moved away from a climate of bad relations with Washington when they signed the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Naivasha, they perceive the United States as having shifted the goal posts on them since" Zenawi said.As a result, Zenawi asserted that the GoS believes that "the U.S. will get them one way or the other," and from that perspective, they are already in a corner. "Believing they will lose, they perceive no benefit to them of resolving the problems of South Sudan”, the Ethiopian top official said.

Zenawi said that the NCP’s strategy as a result will be to deploy delaying tactics such as postponing the January 2011 referendum, buy time on Darfur and "hope for a miracle" in 2011. South Sudan’s self determination did go ahead in January resulting in a massive vote for independence, which it achieved in January. Sudan was the first country to recognise South Sudan’s secession."To die today or die tomorrow, they will choose to employ delaying mechanisms allowing them to die tomorrow" Zenawi explained.He said that while the "Islamic agenda" may have motivated the regime ten years ago, today they are interested only in money and power.

He pressed the case that direct negotiations between Khartoum and Washington could lead to rational discussions.Zenawi then went on to wrap up his views saying that if he were the United States he would look at two options.The first one, which he clearly conveyed as the preferred choice according to the US cable, would be to "remove the Bashir regime."

Acknowledging that such an option was unlikely, Zenawi advocated for making a clear representation to the GoS that the United States is not "out to get them" and laying out clear benchmarks of actions expected of the GoS on both Darfur and South Sudan that would be necessary to "avoid continued challenges" with the US. He concluded the discussion by highlighting that "they [Khartoum] don’t trust the Obama Administration," and "they trust the Obama Administration less than the Bush Administration," and with a clear reference to US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice and former Senior NSC Director for Africa Gayle Smith. Both officials are considered hardliners in their views of Khartoum.

Relations between Sudan and Ethiopia are considered to be generally strong in recent years. Addis Ababa was one of Bashir’s first stops after the ICC arrest warrant.Ethiopia is seen as an honest broker by Sudanese parties and has hosted numerous meetings between north and south over the past two years.More recently Ethiopia agreed to deploy its troops as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission to Sudan’s disputed Abyei region.

Khartoum sent tanks and troops into oil-producing Abyei last May, forcing tens of thousands of people to flee the fighting. But both sides agreed to set up a demilitarised zone along the border after talks in Addis Ababa. Last month Zenawi attempted to mediate between the NCP and Sudan People Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N) in a bid to end the ongoing clashes that erupted last June in South Kordofan. However, the effort seemed to have been fruitless.

To makes matters worse, the Sudanese army on Friday clashed with the SPLM-N fighters in Blue Nile state which borders Ethiopia. It remains to be seen how the latter would react particularly given reports of exodus by civilian population from the state in the aftermath of the fighting.There are small signs however, that relations between Addis Ababa and Khartoum are not as smooth as it seems.

The government sponsored Sudanese Media Center (SMC) website has carried a report that was critical of choosing Ethiopian troops to deploy in Abyei citing national security concerns and Addis Ababa ties with Israel. Furthermore, the Paris-based Indian Ocean newsletter reported concerns by Addis Ababa over information of meetings between Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Services (NISS) officers and members of the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF) and leaders of the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Party (EPRP).

The report said Khartoum on the other hand is angered over Ethiopian military support to Juba which it claims is falling into the hands of SPLM-N in South Kordofan. The SPLM-N is the northern sector of South Sudan’s ruling party the SPLM. During Sudan’s second north-south civil war (1983-2005) large numbers of marginalised groups in Blue Nile and South Kordofan joined the SPLM in their conflict with Khartoum. Khartoum has said it now perceives the SPLM-N to be an illegal military force and political party, which continues to be backed by the SPLM in South Sudan. In October 2008 Sudan summoned the Ethiopian ambassador to protest against weapons that it said had arrived in South Sudan’s capital Juba on an Ethiopian military plane.

In another cable, in a 2006 meeting A/S Frazer told PM Meles that increasing U.S. engagement with the African Union would be jeopardized if the upcoming AU Summit in Khartoum elected Sudanese President Bashir the next President of the General Assembly. Meles said he did not think that Bashir had the votes to be elected, although Egypt and Libya supported his candidacy.

Where is the Horn heading to ? What are Ethiopian's opposition parties doing ?