Marii Oromia

Green light for OLF factions

The Ethiopian government has given the green light to a group of mediators to
try to cajole the two competing wings of the Oromo Liberation Front.
The crisis inside this Eritrea-backed Ethiopian rebel organisation has
reached such a pitch that two of its competing factions have just publicly denounced
each other.

On 31 July, the executive committee of the Oromo Liberation Front
(OLF) denounced an internal "clique" and excluded its four officials from any
function in the organisation's leadership. Those concerned are the OLF's
former head of external relations, Hassan Hussein; the organisation's former
spokesman, Lencho Bati; as well as a former head of the OLF armed forces, General Kemal Gelchu. But this dissident group feels that right is on its side, because a
majority of the OLF national council is believed to have decided to relieve
the members of the organisations executive committee of its functions.
It is in this environment of intense tension inside the principal Ethiopian
armed opposition organisation that the Ethiopian government coalition EPRDF
has decided to give a three member mediation team the green light to contact the
competing OLF factions.

The mediation team consists of the former Ambassador and United Nations official, Berhanu Dinka, the former OLF executive and present representative of the NGO Oxfam in the Horn of Africa, Abera Tola, and the pastor Daniel Gebreselasie. The latter is based in Atlanta and is a member of Ephrem Isaac's Elders Committee, a group that has already mediated to free imprisoned opposition members in Addis Ababa after they had made their apologies to Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. These three men went to Minneapolis (USA) for separate meetings with members of the two OLF factions.

On the other hand, they refused to have any contact with another dissident faction in this movement headed by Gelasa Dilbo.

The IOL

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