Kenya to Hold Talks on Regional Hunger Crisis

Nairobi, Kenya

Kenya will hold an international meeting in efforts to address the hunger crisis facing the Horn of Africa region, government officials have said.

Following a cabinet meeting chaired by Kenya’s President Mwai Kibaki on Thursday, to address the food crisis in the country, the government said it will host an international conference to seek emergency food requirements for the 14 million people in need in the region.

A statement by the presidential press services said that the conference will also call for opening of relief interventions inside Somalia in order to stop the refugee influx into the country.

“The meeting will also support the opening of feeding camps inside Somalia in order to stop the influx of refugees to neighbouring countries especially Kenya,” read the statement.

Apart from seeking immediate measures to avert the disaster, the meeting is also expected to tackle the unrest in Somalia that has compounded the devastating drought worst ever seen in six decades.

Two weeks ago the government allocated about $100 Million emergency fund to address the food shortage that has placed about 3.5 million people at risk in the country. The World Food Program (WFP) has teamed up with the government and stepped up relief food distributions in affected areas mainly in the northern parts of the country.

The food crisis in the country has been blamed on the influx of Somali refugees into the country fleeing starvation, but analysts have accused the government of poor approach to the crisis.

Food has been reported to be rotting away in some parts of the country, while people in some regions are starving to death. The worst hit areas include North Eastern Province and parts of North Rift, among them Turkana, Pokot and Baringo.

A decision whether the country should import genetic maize has been a center of debate over its safety, leading to inflation of its prices.

 Asmara, Eritrea
UN Report: Eritrea Planned to Bomb AU Summit
 A United Nation’s report has accused Eritrea of planning a bomb attack against an African Union summit in Ethiopia in January. The report from UN monitoring group on Somalia and Eritrea outlined that the plan was to attack the AU headquarters in Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa with a car bomb while African leaders took breaks.

Among other outlined areas targeted in the attack was to blow up Africa’s largest market to “kill many people”, areas between the Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi’s office and the Sheraton Hotel where most African leaders were staying during the AU summit.
The report said Eritrean intelligence agents were active in Uganda, South Sudan Kenya and Somalia, and that actions by the country posed a threat to security and peace in the region.

“Whereas Eritrean support to foreign armed opposition groups has in the past been limited to conventional military operations, the plot to disrupt the African Union summit in Addis Ababa in January 2011, which envisaged mass casualty attacks against civilian targets and the strategic use of explosives to create a climate of fear, represents a qualitative shift in Eritrean tactics,” read the report.

The Eritrean government has been accused of sponsoring, arming and hosting numerous militant leaderships and separatist rebels in the Horn of Africa, claims it denies involvement.

The Eritrean ambassador to the UN Araya Desta told the BBC on Thursday that the UN Report was “totally a fabrication and absurd”, saying that the report was part of a wider scheme to push for more sanctions on Eritrea.

Ethiopian intelligence officials uncovered the plot to set off multiple bombs in Addis Ababa in January at an AU summit following seizure of explosives concealed in food sacks. In an interview with UN investigators, one of the arrested plotters said that the aim was not to kill African leaders but to show them that Ethiopia was not safe.

“By so doing, some people may start to listen to what Eritrea is saying about Ethiopia. Some Arab States will be sympathetic to this view,” he was quoted as saying.

The UN has imposed an arms embargo on Eritrea, as well as a travel ban and asset freeze on country’s political and military leaders who are linked to violation of an arms embargo on Somalia.
 
The Red Sea state seceded from the entire Ethiopia in 1993 following an overwhelming referendum in favour of the split following a 30-year war. Claims of the two countries funding insurgency in the other has led failed to end the long-standing feud that has been blamed to fuel conflict in the region.