| Home | Politics | Human Rights | Water | Economy | Education | Sci & Tech | Culture | Sport |
By Andualem Sisay - Capital
12 June, 2007
Prime Minister Meles Zenawi highlighted his government’s readiness to create national consensus by talking with different groups in the country including with the arrested Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD) leaders and other rebel groups.
At the press briefing he called yesterday, June 9, 2007 at his office for both local and international media, as the major objective of celebrating the beginning of the third Ethiopian Millennium is to create national consensus among various groups of the society, he expressed his government’s willingness to talk to those who have even taken up arms against the government.
Contrary to his usual responses regarding arrested CUD leaders which maintained that, ‘their case is in the hands of the court’, Meles showed his government’s readiness to talk to CUD leaders for the sake of creating national consensus during the third Ethiopian Millennium celebrations if the CUD leaders approach the government.
Responding to the question if his government is going to release the CUD leaders as requested by the residents of Addis Ababa at the recent discussions made between his party leaderships and residents, the Prime Minister said: “During the meetings that EPRDF officials held with the residents of Addis Ababa, the issue of the detained leaders of the CUD did not come up frequently. It was not raised by all that many people as such; there were some individuals who did raise it; but on the whole, this was not the agenda of the participants in the meeting.”
“It is up to the leaders themselves whether to abandon their previous destructive policy and strategies and seek to be part and parcel of the peaceful democratic process. It is the responsibility of government to take people who have violated the law to court and we have done that. It is up to them to take the next step if they want to rehabilitate themselves in the political process in Ethiopia,” he said.
Expressing his government’s approach regarding the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), which recently killed 9 Chinese and 64 Ethiopians at an oil field in the eastern part of the country, Meles indicated the effort that his government made so far and on the way forward.
“We did indeed make a lot of effort to talk to the ONLF, especially in 2005. However, it has become abundantly clear that these groups are unwilling to respond to our peace offers and have now become part and parcel of the Eritrean government’s agenda for the destabilization of our country,” he said.
“Under such circumstances,” said the Prime Minister, “the national consensus we hope to build will be targeted at isolating such groups and building consensus for peace within our country and the need to avoid being used as a pole by foreign powers to destabilize Ethiopia. That I think, could be the basis of consensus that we build during the Millennium celebrations. I believe we have made some progress in that regard.”
In addition to other national issues such as inflation, the Ethiopian Telecommunication Authority and the Ethio-Eritrea border issue, Meles also responded to various international issues such as the Somalia situation and the G-8 Summit among others.