From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Fri Feb 26 2010 - 20:04:03 EST
1. North Korea sells arms to Ethiopia with U.S. OK: NYT
NEW YORK
Sat Apr 7, 2007 4:47pm EDTNEW YORK (Reuters) - The Bush administration
allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from North Korea
in an apparent violation of a U.N. Security Council sanctions
resolution passed months earlier over its nuclear test, The New York
Times reported in Sunday editions...............Click the link below
for full coverage
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSN0728288520070407
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2 Ethiopia, Uganda deny breaking U.N. Somali arms ban
Sat May 24, 2008 6:23am EDTBy Tsegaye Tadesse
ADDIS ABABA, May 24 (Reuters) - Ethiopia and Uganda denied on Saturday
accusations by a U.N. weapons sanctions committee that their soldiers
broke the world body's arms embargo on Somalia.
The United Nations says the Horn of Africa nation is awash with
weapons despite a 1992 weapon ban that followed the collapse of the
central government a year before. Somalia has been engulfed in civil
conflict ever since.
Dumisani Kumalo, chairman of the U.N. Security Council's Somalia
sanctions committee and the South African envoy to the body, accuses
"elements" of an AU peacekeeping force in Somalia and Ethiopian and
Somali government troops of arms trafficking.
"We want to assure the world community that this accusation does not
have an iota of truth," Wahade Belay, spokesman for the Ethiopian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told Reuters.
"In fact our troops were and still are playing an exemplary role in
mitigating the arms trade inside Somalia," he said.
Boats, planes and donkeys mainly transport weapons and military
hardware to Somalia's numerous arms markets.
The South African envoy said 80 percent of ammunition on sale in
Somali markets come from Ethiopian and Somali troops.
........Click the link below for full coverage
http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL24158241._CH_.2400
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3. Peacekeepers sell arms to Somalis
Only Uganda and Burundi have sent peacekeepers to Somalia
Ugandan peacekeepers in Somalia have been selling arms to insurgents,
a United Nations report says.
The report, by the UN monitoring group on the Somali arms embargo,
says Ethiopia, Eritrea and Yemen are also breaking the embargo.
It cites one incident in which a group of Ugandan soldiers allegedly
received $80,000 for a transaction.
Some peacekeepers are accused of setting up an arms trading network
through translators.
The Ugandan army has already dismissed the accusations as "absolutely
ridiculous."
Inquiry
The report says the soldiers received a wish-list of weapons from arms
dealers and the weapons were then supplied from stores of equipment
seized from insurgents.
Tens of thousands have fled the fighting in Mogadishu
The monitoring group says the weapons find their way back to the
insurgent group they were captured from in the first place.
The report was presented to the UN Security Council by the head of the
committee which has been monitoring the arms embargo, Dumisani Kumalo,
who is South Africa's ambassador to the UN.
Mr Kumalo said there were grave concerns that some peacekeepers would
do things to undermine the peace process.....
.Click the link below for full coverage.....
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7417435.stm
4. US pays Uganda to arm Somali fighters
Kampala
Ugandan troops in Mogadishu have been secretly selling guns and
ammunition to Somalia’s struggling Transitional Federal
Government on behalf of the United States government, Daily Monitor
can reveal.
Explaining American assistance to the TFG during a recent press
briefing to US journalists in Washington, D.C., a top US State
Department official said Uganda has been supplying arms to Somali
troops and picking dollars from Washington.
“We have gone to the Ugandans when the TFG (Transitional Federal
Government) has run short of weapons and ammunition and told the
Ugandans to provide what TFG needs,� the official, who was not
named in the partly classified June 26 briefing, said.
“When the Ugandans provide those weapons, they give us a bill
and an accounting for what they have turned over [to Somali
government] and we then give them the money to replace the stores and
the arms.�
The official said the UPDF has mostly supplied small arms and
ammunition and had increased its supplies in May when Somali Islamic
extremists increased their attacks on the TFG and government forces.
The UPDF, which is in Somalia as part of an African Union peacekeeping
force to the country, is said to have been paid up to $10 million
(Shs21b) for arming and training the TFG fighting force. This is the
first time the arms-for-cash deal is being made public and the
revelations could mean that the UPDF was violating the neutral terms
of its peacekeeping mandate by arming one of the
combatants....................Click the link below for full coverage
http://www.monitor.co.ug/News/Education/-/688336/712308/-/10dpp0r/-/index.html
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