Statement by the Embassy of Ethiopia on False Reports by the New York Times

WASHINGTON, July 26 /PRNewswire/ -- Articles published today and in the July 22nd editions of the New York Times about Ethiopian aid efforts in the Ogaden Region were factually inaccurate, the Embassy of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia in Washington, DC, said today.

The Embassy released this statement by Samuel Assefa, Ethiopia's Ambassador to the United States:

The reporting was wrong. I can only conclude from the articles by Jeffrey Gettleman that he is willing to take the word of a terrorist organization over that of the U.N. World Food Program and the democratically elected government of Ethiopia.

We have asked New York Times editor Bill Keller for a full retraction as the false statements and misrepresentations are so severe that they go beyond simple correction.

The articles' two central claims have been denied not just by the Ethiopian government but also by international organizations overseeing these aid programs.

First, the contention that the Ethiopian government is systematically blocking food to the Ogaden has been refuted by the U.N. World Food Program, which said the government is allowing food shipments to the region. Further, the WFP said that its Country Director was quoted out of context in Mr. Gettleman's article.

Second, the allegation that funding was being diverted from a polio program was challenged by the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in a statement released Tuesday.

The Times' articles contained an appalling number of unconfirmed rumors and innuendos. In 20 instances -- including some of the most disturbing allegations -- Mr. Gettleman apparently relied primarily on unnamed sources in the article published on the front page of The Times on Sunday.

The article quoted a single unnamed source stating, falsely, "It's a starve-out-the population strategy." That's an astounding and brutal allegation to level under any circumstance and it's simply false. How could The Times allow Mr. Gettleman to make this unbelievable allegation from an anonymous source?

In today's report, Mr. Gettleman dispensed even with anonymous sources and stated as fact that "the Ethiopian military has recently sealed off [the Ogaden region] in an apparent effort to squeeze a growing rebel movement there."

This isn't a matter of whether The Times allowed sloppy articles to be published.

The most fundamental allegations in the articles were simply wrong and it's egregious that The Times would allow such inflammatory and unsupportable claims to be published.

  The facts are as follows:

  -- The Ogaden National Liberation Front is a terrorist organization. In
     April the group slaughtered more than 70 civilian workers, both
     Ethiopian and Chinese, at a Chinese-run oil field in the Ogaden. (Mr.
     Gettleman continues to report that soldiers were killed in this attack,
     which is false.)
  -- The Ethiopian army is working to facilitate humanitarian food shipments
     while striving to provide security in a region under attack by the
     Eritrean-backed ONLF. (AP reported today that: "Eritrea has secretly
     supplied 'huge quantities of arms' to a Somali insurgent group with
     alleged ties to al-Qaeda in violation of an international arms embargo
     and despite the deployment of African peacekeepers, U.N. arms experts
     have concluded.")
  -- The Ogaden is one of the impoverished areas of Ethiopia that has
     frequently suffered food shortages and the government is deeply
     committed to preventing another such crisis in the context of terrorist
     activity.
  -- The UN says the Government of Ethiopia is allowing food aid into the
     region.
  -- The WFP Country Director for Ethiopia was quoted out of context in The
     Times article. The Country Director actually said that food delays were
     the result of UN processes, not an Ethiopian blockade.
  -- An interagency UN mission, including OCHA, WFP, and others, is visiting
     the Ogaden to continue facilitating the distribution of humanitarian
     relief.