From: Yemane Natnael (yemane_natnael@yahoo.com)
Date: Thu Jul 31 2008 - 10:47:19 EDT
Eritrea allays fears over new warThursday, 31 July 2008 14:36 UK
Eritrea says the UN's decision to end the peace mission on its border with Ethiopia will not make war likely.
Tens of thousands of people died in a two-year border war that ended in 2000.
A government spokesman said the UN mission had only been "symbolic" and
diplomatic efforts to remove Ethiopia from Eritrean soil would
continue.
Eritrea withdrew its support for the UN peace force in February
as it was angered by Ethiopia's refusal to comply with an international
border ruling.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council voted to end its 1,700-strong mission, known as Unmee.
In April, UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon warned of a possible
return to war if the peacekeepers pulled out of Eritrea and Ethiopia.
'No impact'
Eritrean government spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel said the termination
of the UN mission mandate was "long overdue" and would have little
impact on the region.
"Unmee's presence was really symbolic, it was not a peace enforcement
force, it does not have the capability of deterrent - so it's not going
to have any impact," he told the BBC's Network Africa programme.
He said that the job of delimiting and demarcating the border
between the two countries had been finished, so the UN's mission should
end.
But he added that Ethiopia continued to occupy Ethiopian
sovereign territory and the UN Security Council was not talking about
it.
"Legally Ethiopia's occupation of Eritrea is untenable - it
cannot be accepted by the international community - I think our focus
has been on the legal end and the diplomatic dimensions of the issue,"
he said.
Before Wednesday's UN Security Council vote, Ethiopian Prime
Minister Meles Zenawi said he thought a return to hostilities unlikely.
"The peacekeepers played an important role, but one cannot say
that their role was irreplaceable in the sense of maintaining the
relative peace along the borders that we now have," he told the BBC.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7534623.stm
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