Ethiopia's decision to expel six of nine Norwegian diplomats from the country means Ethiopia will lose around 30 million Norwegian kroner in Norwegian development aid, said reports from Oslo on Thursday.
"This isn't a punishment, but a consequence of the fact that so many people at the Norwegian Embassy are being kicked out," Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Stoere told newspaper Aftenposten.
One of the diplomats' most important jobs involved monitoring the use of aid funds that are sent through the embassy. The total amounts to around 100 million Norwegian kroner (about 16 million U. S. dollars) this year alone.
With only three diplomats left on the embassy staff, capacity to handle aid funding is sharply reduced, and the aid itself will be reduced as well, said the foreign minister.
Ethiopian authorities have expressed dissatisfaction with Norway's conduct in relation to Ethiopian interests in the Horn of Africa, and requested Norway on Tuesday to reduce the number of its diplomatic staff in Addis Ababa to three people.
Stoere would not say exactly what led to the expulsion, noting only that "we need to go through our experience." He expects to meet his Ethiopian counterpart in New York next month, at the UN General Assembly.
Source: Xinhua
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