Brussels (AFP) Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi was in a Brussels hospital in a “critical” state on 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 spokesperson 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 spokesperson told AFP.

In Brussels, the Ethiopian embassy refused to 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 a few days.

No information was available on his illness.

Questions surfaced about Meles’s health when he missed a two-day African Union summit on 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.

1. Haile says:

   July 19, 2012 at 2:11 pm

   I sympathize with PM Zenawi in relation to his poor health.

   The problem is with the embassy staff and all cronies in Addis Ababa who tell lies all the time. At this moment, though, if H.E. the Prime Minister is in serious troubles, the rest of the crew is either preparing to leave the Country or those outside the Country are contemplating on some sort of asylum — they have no moral authority to face the poor, but innocent and dignified, people of Ethiopia who they robbed through corruption and what not and to whom they have always been lying all along! It is unfortunate that Meles created and allowed such low-graded individuals to flourish in the System thereby making all capable individuals and professionals to distance themselves from that circle.

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