Agence France Presse
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia announced Monday it was severing ties with Qatar, accusing the Gulf Arab state of supporting armed opposition groups across the Horn of Africa region. It cited Qatar's "strong ties" with Ethiopia's arch-foe Eritrea, and alleged Qatari support to armed opposition groups within Ethiopia as well as to Islamist insurgents in Somalia, where Addis Ababa sent troops in 2006 to prop up a weak government..............................
On April 11, the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry had sharply criticized the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera for airing a series of TV reports on Ethiopia's restive Ogaden region.The Ethiopian authorities have imposed a news blackout on the vast area populated by ethnic Somali Muslims and slapped touch restrictions on humanitarian work.
The Foreign Ministry was particularly upset by a report on the activities of the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF), the separatist group it has been battling for years.
"Al-Jazeera is using inaccurate and misleading information, fabricated by opposition elements backed by a state which makes no secret of its efforts to destabilize not only Ethiopia but also the entire subregion," it had said. "It is hard to ignore the fact that Al-Jazeera broadcasts out of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is a close ally of Eritrea. It would be totally unrealistic to imagine that any Al-Jazeera program on Ethiopia could be anything other than seriously biased."
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