Eritrea criticises Kenya over Somalia incursion

ERITREA has criticised Kenya’s military incursion into Somalia, saying that it is worsening and undermining the country’s peace process.

In a statement directed at the Kenya Defence Forces and their Ethiopian counterparts who have crossed into Somalia, and likely to spark off another round of diplomatic row, the Eritrean Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the the Operation Linda Nchi and asked all Somalia neighbours to pull out of Mogadishu. The statement was sent through the Eritrean embassy in Nairobi yesterday.

Apart from Kenya and Ethiopia, Uganda and Burundi are the major troop-contributing nations to the African Union Peacekeeping Mission in Somalia. A day before the London Conference on Somalia starts, Asmara dismissed the international efforts to finding a political solution that  excludes any “formation or group”. “There is a growing international conviction that a serious and credible process is key to unlocking the Somali problem.

And yet this has not been matched by concerted and sustained action as the focus continues to be on military and counter-terrorism strategies that, despite the discouraging experience of the past, continue to consume disproportionate resources and energies,” said the statement. “More critically, the military interventions of Somalia’s immediate neighbours, whatever their motivations, have to be brought to an end as they complicate and worsen the situation, fuel hatred and resentment, intensify and prolong the conflict  and undermine the political process.”

The Red Sea state of Eritrea and Nairobi have had sour diplomatic relations in  recent times. Kenya and other members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, along with the  the United Nations Security Monitoring Group, accuse Eritrea of funding the terrorist group, al Shabaab. Eritra has denied the allegations and accused Ethiopia of ”peddling lies to undermine the government of President Isaias Aferworki”. At the start of the Operation Linda Nchi, Kenya accused Eritrea of supplying the al Shabaab militants with three plane-loads of weapons through the Baidoa airport, a claim that the latter vehemently denied.

The Star