Ethiopia says Meles is ill amid AU Summit absence

Ethiopia says Meles is ill amid AU Summit absence

By William Davison | July 16, 2012

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Newai Gebreab (left), long time economic advisor to Meles, and Foreign Ministry chief Berhane Gebrekristos are running the country since Meles Zenawi's absence from the state of affairs due to illness. The two Meles Zenawi's confidantes from Adwa with Eritrean lineage have assumed key leadership positions. Undoubtedly, they are supported by Gen. Samora Yonus and Communications Chief Bereket Simon (both of Eritrean heritage) together with Meles' God-father and profoundly anti-Ethiopian Sebhat Nega and Tewodros Hagos, an Eritrean but ironically a TPLF politburo who closely monitors the political heartbeat of Tigrai. This signifies Meles Zenawi's power oligarchy will remain intact long even after his death - with First Lady Azeb Mesfin sparkling at the center of the oligarchy like a diamond. It has been an old habit to call ultra-Eritrean nationalists like Meles "Woyane," a term which strictly implies the Tigrians, who have been politically dead since 2001, after Meles decimated them for trying to remove him for sabotaging Ethiopia's imminent military victory over the 1998-2000 War with Asmara. (Ethiomedia)

July 16 (Bloomberg) -- Ethiopia’s government said that Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is ill after he failed to attend an African Union summit, and an opposition group reported he may have died in a European hospital.“There is no serious illness at all. It’s minor only,” Deputy Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn said today in an interview in Addis Ababa, the capital. “As any human being, he has to get medication and he’ll be coming back soon.”
The 57-year-old leader wasn’t at the opening of the African Union summit in Addis Ababa yesterday. He also skipped a meeting of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development in the city on July 14 for “health reasons,” Senegalese President Macky Sall was quoted as saying by the Addis Ababa-based Reporter newspaper.

Meles is head of the ruling Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front and has held power in Ethiopia for more than two decades, after helping lead allied rebel groups to oust Mengistu Haile Mariam’s Marxist military junta in 1991. The EPRDF and its allies in 2010 won all but two of the 547 seats in parliament in an election the European Union said was “heavily” balanced in favor of the ruling party. The Ethiopian National Transitional Council, a Dallas, Texas-based opposition group, said in an e-mailed statement yesterday that Meles may have died in a Belgian hospital. The Ethiopian Review, an anti-government website, reported that Meles was in the Saint-Luc University hospital in Brussels.
Géraldine Fontaine, a spokeswoman for the hospital, wasn’t immediately available for comment when called today.
“ENTC on behalf of the Ethiopian people demands that the government has the responsibility to disclose the truth to its citizens,” the council said.

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