U.S. aid to Ethiopia

Press, 24 February 1978, Page 5

U.S. aid to Ethiopia

' NZPA Washington The American State Department has approved the sale of SIM worth of military transport equipment to Ethiopia, but backed off a promised sale of S7M in lethal materials. Ethiopia is receiving huge supplies of arms from the Soviet Union to aid its war with neighbouring Somalia in the Ogaden Desert. The State Department made it clear it disapproved of the sale of lethal weapons to the Addis Ababa Government because of the conflict, despite an earlier promise to supply Ethiopia. The decision means Ethiopia will not receive two patrol boats and military Ispare parts. It will however, get 23 I trucks, and spare parts for i jeeps and trucks, that were bought before United States arms aid to the Ethiopian Government was ended last April.

“The United States has repeated often that it has no intention of supplying arms to either Ethiopia or SoImalia while the Ogaden i conflict lasts,” a State DeIpartment spokesman said. “We have given no weapons to Somalia and our military relationship with Ethiopia is terminated.”

The State Department said that a special Presidential emissary, David Aaron, had received a new assurance from the Ethiopian leader, Lieutenant-Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, that Ethiopia would not cross into Somalia in its effort to expel Somali forces from the Ogaden. Somalia has claimed important new military victories in the Ogaden war. but has insisted Ethiopian troops and their Soviet and Cuban advisers intend to invadd northern Somalia and annex the territory. . At a news conference in Mogadishu, the Somali Presi-

dent (Mr Siad Barre) said his country was still prepared to negotiate with Ethiopia over tne future of th* Ogaden and said that despit! recent threats he had nof yet committed regular Somali troops to the war.

Official Mogadishu Radio, lin broadcasts monitored in Nairobi, said Somali irregulars had repulsed a second i big Ethiopian offensive in | the northern Ogaden in re(cent days. I In counter-attacks, the Somalis captured the strategic towns of Babile and Fayambiro, which between them control the region’s major routes and were considered the key to the conflict in the area, the radio said. (Ethiopia claims its forces have always controlled Babile).

Soviet and Cuban troops righting alongside the Ethiopians had “died undignified 'deaths" and had been taughf

an “unforgettable lesson Ithe Radio said.