Qatar 'surprised' at rift with Ethiopia

TIES CUT: Ethiopia has accused Qatar of terrorism and of trying to destabilise the Horn of Africa. (Getty Images)

Qatar said on Wednesday it was surprised by Ethiopia's decision to cut diplomatic ties with the Gulf state, and rejected as unfounded the accusation that it sought to destabilise the Horn of Africa.

The official QNA news agency cited a Foreign Ministry spokesman as saying Doha was "surprised" by Addis Ababa's "unfounded and untruthful allegations", and saw them as "a deliberate attempt to justify its own erroneous policies".

On Monday, Ethiopia announced it was severing ties with Qatar, accusing the Doha government of supporting armed opposition groups across the Horn of Africa and citing Qatar's "strong ties" with Ethiopia's arch foe Eritrea.

QNA quoted the spokesman as calling on Ethiopia "to refrain from implicating Qatar in regional differences", and adding that "the Ethiopian government made similar allegations in the past, charges to which Qatar preferred not to respond in the hope that such erroneous behaviour might cease".

On Monday, the Addis Ababa government said in a statement that it had "displayed considerable patience towards Qatar's attempts to destabilise our sub-region and, in particular, its hostile behaviour towards Ethiopia.

"Qatar has now, however, become a major source of instability in the Horn of Africa and more widely," it added.

The statement accused Qatar of using its "media outlets" to undermine Ethiopia.

On April 11, the Foreign Ministry in Addis Ababa sharply criticised the Qatar-based news network Al-Jazeera for broadcasting TV reports on Ethiopia's restive Ogaden region.

Ethiopia imposed a news blackout on the vast area which has an ethnic Somali majority and has seen a long-running separatist rebellion by the Ogaden National Liberation Front.

"It is hard to ignore the fact that Al-Jazeera broadcasts out of Doha, the capital of Qatar. Qatar is a close ally of Eritrea. It would be totally unrealistic to imagine that any Al-Jazeera programme on Ethiopia could be anything other than seriously biased," the Addis Ababa government said.

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