Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi ‘in hospital’ in Brussels; “critical” state
Ethiopia’s government has denied Prime Minister Meles Zenawi is critically ill but says he has been in hospital.
July 18, 2012 (BBC News) – “He is not in a critical state. He is in good condition,” spokesman Bereket Simon told the AFP news agency.
A spokesperson for the Ethiopian embassy in London told the BBC the 57 year old was in a stable condition after hospital treatment.
Speculation about his health began when he missed last weekend’s African Union summit in Addis Ababa.
There were reports that Mr Meles was in hospital in Belgium, suffering from a stomach complaint.
The Ethiopian embassy spokesperson in London said the prime minister had been visited by high-level officials, but did not say where he was being treated.
Diplomatic sources in Brussels told AFP that the Ethiopian leader was in a hospital in the Belgian capital.
“He is in a critical state, his life is in danger,” the agency was told by a diplomat who asked not to be named.
An Ethiopian government press conference about the rumours scheduled for Wednesday morning has been postponed until later this week.
Correspondents say it is believed Mr Meles’s last public appearance was at the G20 talks in Mexico last month.
Mr Meles took power as the leader of a rebel movement which ousted the communist government of Mengistu Haile Mariam in 1991.
He has won several elections since then, but his political opponents have accused him of using repression to retain power.
Ethiopian PM in ‘critical’ state in Brussels clinic
Posted by AFP on July 18, 2012
BRUSSELS, Jul 18 – Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was in a Brussels hospital in a “critical” state Wednesday, several diplomatic sources told AFP, but the Ethiopian government denied he was unwell.
“He is in a critical state, his life is in danger,” said a diplomat who asked not to be named.
In Addis Ababa, however, government spokesman Bereket Simon denied reports that the 57-year-old premier was ill. “He is not in a critical state. He is in good condition,” the spokesman told AFP.
In Brussels, the Ethiopian embassy refused comment. It had said earlier this week that reports he was being treated at a hospital were “false and wrong”, and were a rumour created by “an interest group which has preoccupied itself in disseminating such untrue stories”.
But several diplomats in Brussels said he had been undergoing regular treatment on a private basis at one of the city’s major hospitals and had been in hospital for some days.
No information was available on his illness.
Questions surfaced about Meles’s health when he missed a two-day African Union summit Sunday and Monday, apparently for the first time.
Meles’s wife, herself a lawmaker, had declined to talk to reporters about her husband, who has been at the helm of the Horn of Africa nation since 1991.
One of last times Meles was seen in public was at the G20 meeting in Mexico on June 19.
Dozens of African heads of state visited Ethiopia for the summit, including newly elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi, the first to do so since an assassination attempt in Ethiopia on former president Hosni Mubarak in 1995.
Benin’s president and current AU chairman Thomas Boni Yayi had said at the opening of the summit Saturday that the “unusual absence… cannot go unnoticed, because we know that Mr Meles is full of dynamism and leadership in our meetings”.
Meles may have actually dead so the people should respond to this so that they reclaim thier rights. Especially Oromo people should be vigilent of this and should be ready to make their future. It is good to read OLF’s today’s notice and also be careful of the power sabotagers who may try to use this chance.
I am sure 100per. That zenawi has passed. That is a good news for oromo people stragle. Thanks gud .
Attention, attention, attention citizens of Oromia, especially the Oromos,
It is imperative that our attention and focus should not be distracted by one man’s issue than on the system that has for nearly a century and half has colonized our nation.
We have to also be mindful that Minilk’s, Haile Selasie’s, Mengistu’s and other Ethiopian leader’s demises did not bring justice, freedom and equality with liberty to the Oromo and other nations. Because they all represent the same system and ideology under different cloaks.
Let’s rather focus on what is going on in the whole of Oromia at this very moment when Mr. Zenawi is out of sight. Better work on what and how each and everyone can save and secure Lammiwwan Oromo fi Biyya Oromo from the next predatory rulers of Abyssinia,even if Meles Zenawi departs dead or alive.
IUO
ay oromo esti abren engaz ena men endemiyagatmach enmelket meles netsa yawetaw enanten new ye tigray hizib aydelel belu yesu gif siwerdbachu eu