October 31, 2012
Kenya denies pressuring Eritrea; welcomes it to IGAD
News coming out of Kenya the past couple of days has been confusing. Starting Monday Kenyan and Ethiopian news-outlets had written that President Mwai Kibaki had told Eritrea's Ambassador Beyene Russom during their 29 October, 2012 Harambee House meeting, that he "welcomed Eritrea's decision to rejoin IGAD subject to the Government of Eritrea's support for regional peace initiatives", yet through its October 31, 2012 press release the Kenyan Ministry of Foreign Affairs is categorically denying that any such conditional statement was ever made by President Kibaki. The Wednesday press release states that it "wishes to categorically state that no such statement was made at the meeting. ... We call upon the media houses that misrepresented what was said at the meeting to retract by printing or broadcasting what actually transpired at the meeting as clarified above."
This begs the question why did then the Kenya State House Press Release say that? Did someone, unknown to the President issue that misleading statement that Kenya is officially denying? If so, who did it and why?
Of course, the Tigrean minority-dominated regime of Ethiopia didn't waste any time to spin this news and churn its own signature lies. Its Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote the following additional misinformation:
"The United Nations Monitoring Group report last year said it has found credible evidences attesting Eritrea's continued support to anti-peace elements in Somalia and other areas of the region, and imposed sanctions two times."
Look how it conveniently referred to the Monitoring Group's report from last year (2011), not this year (2012). Why? In this year's report, the Somalia-Eritrea Monitoring Group was forced to admit that it "found no evidence to support allegations of direct Eritrean support to Al-Shabaab" and that "Eritrea is currently a marginal actor in Somalia, with little, if any, influence, either positive or negative, on the course of events." Not only this, the Monitoring Group also stated how Kenya was "set up" to accuse Eritrea of delivering weapons to Somalia based on fabricated information fed to it by other powers. The Monitoring Group's report didn't name those powers who mislead Kenya by name, but from the description it had, it is clear one of them was Ethiopia. For all those who might think deception has been buried 9 feet under with the perfidious Meles Zenawi, think again. The Ethiopian regime can only survive through fraud and fabrications and this is exactly what the Ethiopian regime was trying to do here.
Again, who was behind this misleading news that Kenya is distancing itself from? Read how Kenya's Deputy Speaker of Parliament, Farah Maalim, told Kenyan TV K24 about 8 months ago:
"We've never had a foreign policy. Our foreign policy was always there for the highest bidder. We don't have a foreign policy. Our foreign policy is always hijacked by another state Ðhether a superpower or another country in the region. ... It's like our foreign policy, as far as the region is concerned, has been hijacked by Ethiopia. There's no IGAD; IGAD is Ethiopia."
Our advice to our Kenyan brothers is: "Watch out; the Ethiopian regime is trying to set you up so that it can buy itself some more time to survive while you make enemies out of your genuine friends in the region like Eritrea."
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Received on Wed Oct 31 2012 - 21:06:20 EDT
