Rebels: members of the ONLF
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- 'Stay away' ONLF tells explorers
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ONLF warns Petronas off Ogaden
Ethiopia's Ogaden rebels warned Malaysia's Petronas today that they would not tolerate oil exploration in their remote eastern region, saying it would link the company to war crimes by the Ethiopian military.
The Malaysian state-owned company is one of more than a dozen international explorers hunting for oil and gas deposits in different parts of the huge Horn of Africa country.
The Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels said that everyone should know that Ogaden was a war zone and the government had no right to sign contracts there.
"We urge Petronas to exercise corporate responsibility and steer clear of Ogaden so long as our people are victims of genocide and their rights to determine their own future are violently denied," the guerrillas said in a statement, quoted by Reuters.
"To do anything less would be to act as an accomplice to a regime engaged in yet another African genocide."
The separatist ONLF has long objected to foreign energy companies prospecting in its region, which borders Somalia.
In April 2007, its fighters killed 74 people in a raid on an Ogaden oil exploration field run by a subsidiary of Sinopec, China's biggest refiner and petrochemicals producer.