From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Wed Sep 17 2008 - 16:21:33 EDT
UN council rebukes Eritrea for stonewalling UN probe Wed 17 Sep 2008, 18:05
GMT
By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS, Sept 17 (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council rebuked
Eritrea on Wednesday for refusing to cooperate with a U.N. investigation of
clashes on its border with Djibouti that left a number of Djiboutian
soldiers dead.
Djibouti accused neighboring Eritrea of moving troops across the border in
June, triggering several days of fighting that killed a dozen Djiboutian
troops and wounded dozens more. Eritrea denies making any incursions.
After the incident in the volatile Horn of Africa, the U.N. Security Council
called for a fact-finding mission to go to the region to determine what
happened and who was responsible. Asmara refused to let the mission come to
Eritrea.
"The members of the council welcomed the cooperation of the Djibouti
authorities and regretted that the mission could not go to Eritrea," Burkina
Faso's U.N. Ambassador Michel Kafando told reporters after a Security
Council meeting.
The council also "expressed its concern regarding the tension and
militarization on the contentious border zone that may lead to open clashes"
in the future, said Kafando, the president of the Security Council for
September.
French Ambassador Jean-Maurice Ripert said the council had asked U.N.
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon to step up his efforts to get in contact with
Asmara.
Ripert said the Eritrean government was "refusing any form of contact with
the U.N."
Kafando said council members also called for demilitarization of the border
zone and normalization of relations between the two countries.
Eritrean Ambassador Araya Desta said the reason his government wanted
nothing to do with the Security Council's fact-finding mission was that the
council had issued a statement immediately after the June clashes that
appeared to blame Eritrea without waiting to find out what had happened.
In a unanimous statement passed on June 12, the Security Council urged both
sides, "in particular Eritrea," to commit to a cease-fire, show maximum
restraint and pull back forces to previous positions.
"The condemnation is already done," Desta told Reuters. "It was illegal."
Djibouti hosts French and U.S. military bases and is the main route to the
sea for Eritrea's archfoe and Washington's top regional ally, Ethiopia.
The United Nations withdrew a peacekeeping force from the volatile
Eritrean-Ethiopian earlier this year after Asmara cut off fuel supplies to
the U.N. troops and personnel. The force had been in place since 2000 after
a two-year war between the the two countries that killed some 70,000 people.
(Editing by Bill Trott)
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