Aid official may have defected

Press, 17 December 1985, Page 6

Aid official may have defected

NZPA-AP Nairobi Ethiopia’s top famine relief official, Dawit Wolde Giorgis, has vanished during a trip to the West, according to sources in Ethiopia. A British newspaper has reported that he might seek •asylum in the United States. The defection, if true, would greatly embarrass Ethiopia’s Marxist Government. Mr Dawit, as head of the Government’s Relief and Rehabilitation Commission, was internationally known for his impassioned

pleas for aid to the East African country’s famine victims.

Sources interviewed by Associated Press last week in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, privately acknowledged that Mr Dawit’s return from a trip to Europe and the United States was nearly three weeks overdue.

The sources, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, included commission officials, Western diplomats, and acquaintances.

Mr Dawit left Ethiopia on October 25 for a tour of Western capitals to solicit famine aid. His itinerary was not announced, but the sources said he visited Britain, Belgium, and the United States.

Three weeks ago he broke off communications with Addis Ababa, sources said. The “Sunday Times,” of London, quoted • unspecified sources as saying Mr Dawit “is believed to be seeking political asylum in the United States.” The newspaper quoted the sources as saying that “three weeks

ago he suddenly stopped sending back reports to his Government.” Neither the United States nor Ethiopia has issued statements on the matter. Sources at the United States Embassy in Addis Ababa said yesterday that they had received no information from Washington.

One of Mr Dawit’s brothers defected to the United States in September, only months after Mr Dawit had given his brother’s wife a commission job in New York, the sources in Addis Ababa said.