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Addis
Ababa, October 3, 2009 – Ethiopia sought on Thursday to reassure
international firms exploring for oil and gas in its volatile Ogaden
region that rebels were no longer active there.
Last month, the rebel Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) -- which
attacked a Chinese-run field in 2007, killing 74 people -- warned
corporations seeking hydrocarbons to halt their work in what it said was
a war zone.
"The so-called rebel warning against corporations engaged in exploration
in the Ogaden is a falsehood. The ONLF has no capacity to threaten or
attack facilities," Minister of Mines and Energy Alemayehu Tegenu said
in a statement.
"Following security measures taken by the National Defense Force, the
so-called ONLF does not exist any more and cannot be considered a
security risk," he said, reiterating Addis Ababa's stand that the group
has been defeated.
Ethiopian forces launched an assault against the rebels -- who have been
fighting for more than 20 years -- after the attack on an exploration
field owned by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China's biggest refiner and
petrochemicals producer.
Even Petronas, the state-owned Malaysian company which has received
direct ONLF threats in the past, was continuing its exploratory
activity, Alemayehu said.
More than a dozen international firms are hunting for oil and gas in the
horn of Africa country which is keen to attract foreign investment.
"No one has left locations in the Ogaden, work is continuing and there
are no security problems in the area," Alemayehu said.
The ONLF rebels say they are fighting for self-determination for their
home region, an arid land of mainly nomadic herders, but the government
considers them a terrorist group supported by arch-foe Eritrea to
destabilize the region.
Source: Reuters, Oct 03, 2009
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