DOHA (AFP) —
Qatar said on Wednesday it was surprised by
Ethiopia's decision to cut diplomatic ties
with the Gulf state, and rejected as
unfounded the accusation that it sought to
destabilise the Horn of Africa.
The official QNA news agency cited a foreign
ministry spokesman as saying Doha was
"surprised" by Addis Ababa's "unfounded and
untruthful allegations," and saw them as "a
deliberate attempt to justify its own
erroneous policies."
On Monday, Ethiopia announced it was
severing ties with Qatar, accusing the Doha
government of supporting armed opposition
groups across the Horn of Africa and citing
Qatar's "strong ties" with Ethiopia's arch
foe Eritrea.
QNA quoted the spokesman as calling on
Ethiopia "to refrain from implicating Qatar
in regional differences," and adding that
"the Ethiopian government made similar
allegations in the past, charges to which
Qatar preferred not to respond in the hope
that such erroneous behaviour might cease."
On Monday, the Addis Ababa government said
in a statement that it had "displayed
considerable patience towards Qatar's
attempts to destabilise our sub-region and,
in particular, its hostile behaviour towards
Ethiopia.
"Qatar has now, however, become a major
source of instability in the Horn of Africa
and more widely," it added.
The statement accused Qatar of using its
"media outlets" to undermine Ethiopia.
On April 11, the foreign ministry in Addis
Ababa sharply criticised the Qatar-based
news network Al-Jazeera for broadcasting TV
reports on Ethiopia's restive Ogaden region.
Ethiopia imposed a news blackout on the vast
area which has an ethnic Somali majority and
has seen a long-running separatist rebellion
by the Ogaden National Liberation Front.
"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 programme on Ethiopia could
be anything other than seriously biased,"
the Addis Ababa government said.
http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5j1XojJqTuo9iF-tLmsw9n3O9hmeg
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