From: Eri-News (er_news@dehai.org)
Date: Tue Jul 29 2008 - 21:32:16 EDT
U.N. council to disband Eritrea-Ethiopia force
Tue 29 Jul 2008, 21:39 GMT
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, July 29 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is
planning to disband its peacekeeping mission to the volatile border
between Eritrea and Ethiopia after Eritrea forced out most of the
U.N. troops, diplomats said on Tuesday.
The mandate for the 1,700-strong force expires on Thursday and a
draft resolution circulated at the United Nations by Belgium calls
for an end to the mission.
The resolution, which council diplomats said would be put to a vote
on Wednesday, calls on the two sides "to show maximum restraint and
refrain from any threat or use of force against each other, and to
avoid provocative military activities."
The United Nations withdrew its peacekeeping force from the border in
February after Eritrea cut off fuel supplies. The force had been in
place since 2000 after a two-year war between the Horn of Africa
neighbors that killed some 70,000 people.
Eritrea is angry that the United Nations has been unable to enforce a
ruling by an independent boundary commission awarding the bulk of
disputed border territory to Eritrea.
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned in April that the
withdrawal of the peacekeepers could spark renewed conflict on the
1,000-km (620-mile) frontier.
Eritrea's ambassador to the United Nations, Araya Desta, told Reuters
Asmara did not want a military confrontation with Addis Ababa but was
fed up with what he described as an illegal occupation of Eritrean
territory.
"We have a right to take our land, to do anything possible to take
back our territories," Desta said. "I don't envisage at this stage
any use of military force to do that."
The Brussels-based think-tank International Crisis Group said last
month the armies of the feuding neighbors were "less than a football
pitch" apart, risking a catastrophic new war.
Asmara says a November 2007 "virtual demarcation" of the border by
the now-defunct boundary commission ended the issue. Ethiopia says
Eritrea is illegally massing troops on the border in a supposedly
demilitarized zone and it wants to discuss the border demarcation
further.
The Eritrea-Ethiopia dispute is part of a set of regional tensions
that extends into Somalia, where Ethiopian troops are supporting an
interim government, and into Djibouti, whose forces clashed with
Eritrean troops last month. (Editing by Chris Wilson)
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