| Article Index |
|---|
| Ethiopian Officials Deny BBC Report on Ethiopian Famine |
| Page 2 |
| All Pages |
Page 1 of 2
Ethiopian officials and an aid agency have denied a BBC report that millions of dollars in aid for Ethiopian famine victims in the 1980s went to buy arms.Abadi Zemo, a senior member of Ethiopia's ruling coalition, described the allegations as nonsensical.
The charity Christian Aid said its "investigations do not correspond to the BBC's version of events".
The BBC report said millions of dollars in Western aid had been siphoned off by Ethiopian rebels to buy weapons.
It quotes former rebel leaders as saying they had posed as merchants in meetings with charity workers to get aid money during the 1984-85 famine.
They used the cash to fund attempts to overthrow the government of the time, the report said.
One rebel leader estimated that $95m (£63m) - from Western governments and charities, including Band Aid - had been used for military purposes.
An assessment by America's CIA at the time said aid was almost certainly diverted.
'Rubbish'
Mr Zemo, who was the head of the humanitarian wing of the rebel Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF) in the 1980s, dismissed the allegations in the BBC report, saying they were not new.
He also rejected the claim that current Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, a leading TPLF member in the 1980s, had ordered that only 5% of the aid fund should go towards feeding the hungry.
"Do you think the TPLF could tolerate such a thing, do you think could do such a thing? No, this is rubbish."
Meanwhile, Christian Aid, which was involved in delivering aid to Ethiopia at the time, said in a statement: "There are allegations in the [BBC] story which are against all of Christian Aid's principles and our initial investigations do not correspond to the BBC's version of events."
Nick Guttmann, the agency's director of emergency relief operations, said that the "story has to be put into context".
"We were working in a major conflict, there was a massive famine and people on all sides were suffering.
"Both the rebels and the government were using innocent civilians to further their own political ends. But that is not what humanitarian agencies like ourselves were doing. We were there to help the people in the greatest need and did so.
"In all emergency relief operations, Christian Aid produces a budget which states how much food we can afford to buy and how many people this will reach. This is always followed up with monitoring visits to see the projects and account for every penny," Mr Guttmann said.
