S/PV.6674 Security Council

I thank President Guelleh for his briefing. I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed Sheikh Sharif Sheik, President of the Republic of Somalia. President Ahmed (spoke in Arabic): Allow me to greet all members of the Security Council and your presidency, Sir, and we thank you for having given us this opportunity to speak. The Security Council knows how much the Somali people are suffering from terrorist groups. The Somali Government has, as far as possible, tried to reconcile with those groups. However, the support that they receive from the Eritrean regime has prevented reconciliation. The Council is also aware of our previous relations with President Afwerki. We know that he has no desire to promote calm in the region until he has fulfilled his own expectations and ambitions. Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaida receive political, logistical and financial support from the Eritrean Government. Such support arrives by sea and air. It is known that Hassan Dahir Aweys himself was in Asmara. He then moved to Somalia by aeroplane. That shows that the Eritrean regime has the ability to deliver assistance that is used by Al-Shabaab directly from Asmara to Somalia. It is also well known that Somalia has no direct borders with Eritrea, and has not had bad relations with Eritrea in the past. In the current circumstances, however, we are suffering from the activities of Al-Shabaab and Al-Qaida and of those providing them with material support from Eritrea. I recall that, on 22 May 2009, Hassan Dahir Aweys himself took to the media to thank the Republic of Eritrea for its direct support. The Afwerki regime is the only one that does not recognize this Government. The Eritrean Minister of information has declared that he has no objection to this Government. We have tried to resolve our problems with Eritrea by reaching out to some of its friends, including the late Muammar Al-Qadhafi, who called on Eritrea repeatedly to leave Somalia alone and to encourage Al-Shabaab and Hassan Dahir Awey’s group to seek reconciliation with the Government so that the situation can calm down. His appeal was explicitly rejected. We have also sought to meet with Eritrea in the context of a conference of the Sahel countries, but Eritrea failed to attend. When I was elected in 2009, I contacted Muammar Al-Qadhafi and asked him to mediate in order to suppress incipient problems and to convince the President of Eritrea not to intervene in my country. Mr. Al-Qadhafi informed me that his efforts had been rebuffed, and that the Eritrean President told him clearly that reconciliation with my country was impossible. Furthermore, our embassies in Kenya and elsewhere became aware of certain financial transactions and that military advisers were being dispatched frequently to Somalia to train terrorist elements. They provided these elements with maps and logistical support, and engaged in attacks on the Transitional Federal Government and the African Union forces in my country. Somalia has no problem whatsoever with Eritrea, but the Eritrean regime insists on terrorizing my people. We have repeatedly tried to overcome the problem through diplomacy and dialogue, which have been rejected. I do not believe that any State in the world besides Eritrea has declared its support for those terrorist organizations. We truly regret the plight of the Eritrean people, but the interests of my country and our neighbours are being harmed by the Eritrean regime. We have therefore joined others in this gathering today, despite the fact that members of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development do not usually meet in the absence of a member unless the situation is especially dire. It is my hope that a strong decision will now be taken against the Eritrean regime.

I thank President Ahmed for his statement. I now give the floor to His Excellency Mr. Meles Zenawi, Prime Minister of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.

I would like to thank you, Mr. President, and the members of the Council for giving us this unique opportunity to express our concerns at the regional level and as individual countries. I shall speak today in my capacities as the current Chairperson of the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and as the Prime Minister of Ethiopia. I really have nothing much to add to what my colleagues have already said, but I wish to highlight a few points. First, we as a region are not complaining about the domestic policies of the Eritrean Government. We may or may not like those policies, but that is not the issue we wish to raise before the Security Council. Our agenda is to address the fact that Eritrea is a prime source of instability for the region as a whole. The second point that I wish to highlight is the fact that this is not a family quarrel between Ethiopia and Eritrea. All States members of IGAD, including the Republic of South Sudan, which joined us recently, are represented here today to express the joint opinion that Eritrea is the primary source of instability in our region. Of course, Ethiopia itself also has a problem with Eritrea, which began when Eritrea invaded our territory. That is not an allegation made by Ethiopia; it is the finding of a neutral arbitral tribunal that was established by Ethiopia and Eritrea. The arbitral tribunal decided that Eritrea had indeed invaded Ethiopia without provocation and should therefore pay compensation. A boundary commission was established and has pronounced itself on the matter. A delimitation decision has been taken, and we in Ethiopia have accepted it without precondition. We may or may not like the delimitation decision itself, but we have made it officially and abundantly clear that we accept it unconditionally. The Eritreans claim that the boundary commission has actually demarcated the boundary on the map. As a famous Foreign Minister of a permanent member of the Security Council told our Foreign Minister, the demarcation of boundaries on maps is a legal fiction, and a very dangerous one. What we have therefore asked the Eritreans to do is to engage us in dialogue so that we can move towards demarcation. That is what Nigeria and Cameroon did; they engaged in dialogue to implement a delimitation decision. That is what grown-up people should do. That, and nothing more, is what we have asked of Eritrea. That is the sum total of the so-called border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It is not a family quarrel because it did not start with Ethiopia. Eritrea first invaded the Hanish Islands of Yemen. Its policy is one of shoot first, start talking later. It invaded our territory, and then started talking. It invaded Djibouti’s territory, denied that it had invaded that territory, and in the end admitted that it had invaded that territory by withdrawing its troops and allowing Qatari troops to replace them. This is not just about borders. In 1995, just one year after it had achieved its formal independence, Eritrea had a quarrel with the Government of the Sudan; it closed the Sudanese embassy in Asmara, gave it to the South Sudanese opposition, and publically stated that it would arm and train any opposition that was prepared to remove the regime in Khartoum. It has characterized the Transitional Federal Government of Somalia as a puppet regime, and has openly and repeatedly held conferences with armed opposition groups of Somalia, including Al-Shabaab, in order to try to destabilize Somalia. It is not a family quarrel; it is a regional problem. It is not a question of lack of communication; it is a problem of the attitude of a certain clique in Asmara that has never grown up from being a rebel group. It is a problem of lawlessness and reckless disregard for international norms. We ask the Security Council to help us to stop that lawlessness because, as it is, the Horn of Africa is a very fragile region. In the absence of the rule of law and action by the Security Council, the implication would be that we are all on our own and that we have to defend ourselves or perish. That is not a choice that we want to make. We believe in the rule of law. We believe in the mandate of the Security Council. We believe that the Security Council can, and must, act. The Council has a draft resolution before it. We in IGAD have been very actively involved in its preparation. We would like to thank our African brothers in the Security Council, in particular Gabon and Nigeria, for working with us very closely in the drafting process and in its presentation to the Council. I am personally disappointed that many of the teeth of the draft resolution were subsequently removed. But I am convinced that, even as it is, it will convey the right message. We therefore appeal to the members of the Council, individually and collectively, to ensure that the message that the clique in Asmara gets is that it cannot continue to destabilize the region without any consequences. We ask the Council to act and to do so decisively.

I now give the floor to Mr. Moses Wetangula, Minister for Foreign Affairs of Kenya.

I speak on behalf of President Mwai Kibaki of Kenya who, regrettably, could not join his brothers at this very critical debate in the Security Council. The imperative for the Security Council to focus sharp attention on Eritrea could not come at a better time. The Council is arguably the most important custodian of world peace and security. Kenya joins the Presidents who spoke ahead of me in placing our case before the Security Council — a case that is not new. We are simply asking for an enhancement of the sentence and punishment already meted out on the offending party. In the past couple of years, the region of the Horn of Africa has experienced serious peace and security challenges. Indeed, the United Nations and the African Union (AU) have partnered with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), our regional organization, to face some of those challenges. IGAD has been a very serious and committed player in that regard. However, we regret that one of our members, who has since disengaged from membership, namely, Eritrea, continues to engage in activities that are inconsistent with, and hostile to, the peace efforts that we all are interested in. As it is now, the region is not coming to the Security Council for the first time; neither should the argument that we have bypassed the AU hold any water. The Security Council is already seized of this matter. The Council is simply being asked to review, enhance and enforce a sentence already passed on the offending party. My country, Kenya, alongside other countries of the region, has a whole raft of issues we can place before the Council — indeed they have been placed before the Council — that are linked to the activities of destruction of our neighbour Eritrea. As you know, Mr. President, Kenya has suffered a series of terrorist attacks — on the American Embassy in 1998, as well attacks on our tourist installations and kidnappings committed by Al-Shabaab. What do we get from our neighbour Eritrea? It says that Al-Shabaab does not constitute a significant threat in the region. Since Kenya launched Operation Protect the Nation, on 16 October, in conjunction with forces from the Transitional Federal Government, to try to clean up the Al-Shabaab menace in the region, we have evidence that Eritrea has supplied arms, ammunition and other logistics to Al-Shabaab. This is truly a hostile and enemy act by a country that ought to be an active member of IGAD. It should not be forgotten that it is on the record that, two or three years ago, Kenya was forced to expel an Eritrean diplomat in Nairobi after establishing beyond any doubt that this diplomat was a critical link between supplies of ammunition, arms and explosive- making materials from his country to Mogadishu, sometimes through Kenya. Those materials had the effect of being used to kill and maim troops of the African Union Mission in Somalia, innocent civilians, women and children, some going about their legitimate business in local markets in Mogadishu. Kenya has suffered, including today when an explosion in the Dadaab refugee camp, which is run by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, killed a policeman and injured several refugees. After each of those violent incidents, what we normally get is Al-Shabaab saying that it lauds the heroic acts and that more will come. It has even said that the skyscrapers of Nairobi are now legitimate targets. Yet, Eritrea first of all says that Al-Shabaab does not pose a significant threat to any country in the region. It is now time for the Security Council to take cognizance of and act on the draft resolution that the Intergovernmental Authority on Development has placed before it in document S/2011/744, which is unanimously supported by all countries and will in some small way help to bring Eritrea to order. I have no doubt that the Council has the will, the means and the capacity to do even more than the region is requesting. It may be too little, too late, but we believe that a step in the right direction is a step in support of peace and security in the region, of which the Security Council is the ultimate custodian. Once again, I wish to thank you, Mr. President, for giving us the opportunity to speak to the Council, and I fully support and endorse the statements made by my senior colleagues, the Presidents who have spoken before me, and urge you and the Council to realize that a failure to act today to sanction Eritrea in the manner requested — albeit somewhat watered down — is perhaps to add a feather to the cap of impunity. And that will not help the region in any way.

I now give the floor to the representative of Uganda, His Excellency Mr. Mull Katende.

Uganda has been part of the decisions taken by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the African Union concerning the situation in Somalia and the border dispute between Djibouti and Eritrea. Uganda remains committed to those decisions and hopes that the Security Council will respond positively to the requests made to it by IGAD and the African Union, including taking measures against all those countries, organizations and individuals identified as being directly or indirectly involved in providing human, financial or technical support to Al-Shabaab and Hizbul Islam militias and terrorists in the Horn of Africa. We are particularly concerned because of what has happened to us in the past. We are also concerned, because we have troops in Somalia and with the African Union Mission in Somalia. We want those troops to do their job, accomplish that job and return home safely.

There are no more speakers inscribed on my list. I intend, with the concurrence of the members of the Council, to suspend the meeting until 3 p.m.