Parliament rejects “unfair and biased” US criticism

The standing committee on foreign affairs of Ethiopia’s House of People’s Representatives has dismissed as “totally unfair and highly biased” comments by Benjamin A Gilman, Republican chairman of the US foreign relations committee, last week in which he stressed the need for the US and the international community to “condemn the Ethiopians’ intransigence” over the Ethio-Eritrea conflict. Gilman said Ethiopia had rejected international goodwill, economic growth and an improving relationship with the US “to exact the pound of flesh demanded by a narrow and frightened domestic constituency”, and called on the UN Security Council to “consider calling on Ethiopia to leash its dogs of war.” Ethiopia’s foreign affairs committee, in a statement reported on Ethiopian radio on Tuesday, said Meles had not rejected the OAU Framework Agreement for peace but the “technical arrangements (that are) inconsistent with the Framework Agreement and the modalities which Ethiopia had accepted earlier.” It said Ethiopia’s conflict with Eritrea was neither “a minor border dispute” nor was it motivated revenge. The core of the fact was that Ethiopia was a victim of unprovoked Eritrean aggression, and “there would not be any international pressure - be it from the USA or the international community - that would prevent Ethiopia from restoring its sovereignty,” the statement added.