Dancers Welcome Queen

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30667, 5 February 1965, Page 2

Dancers Welcome Queen

ffi.Z. Press Assn. —Copyright) TENDAHO (Ethiopia), Feb. 4. A Moslem tribal sultan —who is said to believe it beneath his dignity to bow to a woman yesterday risked the displeasure of Ethiopia’s Emperor, Haile Selassi, by declining to turn up for the visit of the Queen.

The sultan, Dejazmach All Msrah, was expected back from his annual pilgrimage to Mecca when the Queen arrived yesterday to inspect a British-Ethiopian cotton plantation. But when the Queen made her visit he was nowhere to be seen. About 2000 of his tribe, the Danakils, many of whom work on the plantation, turned out to welcome the

Queen, stamping their feet in a warlike dance.

Baboons scampered away in trees overhead, disturbed by the noise, while crocodiles slithered through mangroves at the edge of the river, 80 yards away. Ethiopian paratroopers, wearing red berets and carrying Sten guns mounted a dsicreet guard in the jungle. The Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, flew 240 miles from the capital to visit the plantation. The Emperor had flown there earlier.

The Queen stood by the river as drums beat a rousing rhythm and scores of Danakil youths danced amid shouts of “The Queen, the Queen, the flower of England, the Queen.” The Royal party later returned to Addis Ababa where the Queen presented a five-year-old chestnut stallion, Robespierre, to the Emperor. Last night the Queen gave a State banquet in honour of

the Emperor at the British Embassy. On the last day of her visit to Addis Ababa, the Queen will take a horseback ride to a picnic and watch a demonstration of the horseman’s sport of “gougs” by Ethiopian warrior tribes.