Ethiopia 'occupied tense zone'
2005-11-24 16:13
Addis Ababa - Ethiopian troops briefly entered the demilitarised zone along the border with Eritrea, but the soldiers left the area after UN peacekeepers intervened, a UN spokesperson said on Thursday.
About 20 troops occupied part of the Temporary Security Zone for five days after peacekeepers vacated the position because of restrictions imposed by Eritrea on peacekeeping operations there, said Gail Bindley-Taylor Sainte, spokesperson for the UN mission.
She was speaking a day after the UN Security Council passed a resolution that warns of possible sanctions unless Eritrea lifts the restrictions and the two sides reverse a worrisome troop build-up.
The resolution also urges Ethiopia to accept a 2 000 border agreement.
Adopted unanimously, the resolution follows a trip to the region by Japanese Ambassador Kenzo Oshima on behalf of the council. In a report to fellow council members, Oshima had sought the resolution and noted that the "current stalemate is pregnant with risk".
Offered no initiatives
But he offered no initiatives on how to find a solution except to urge both sides to meet their obligations. Instead, he suggested that countries with influence on the two nations launch a "new series of vigorous diplomatic initiatives to break the stalemate".
On October 5, the Eritrean government banned helicopter flights by UN peacekeepers in its airspace in a buffer zone with Ethiopia. It then banned UN vehicles from patrolling at night on its side of the zone, prompting the UN to vacate 18 of its 40 posts.
"Any violation in TSZ is a great concern to us, especially at this time when our monitoring capability is degraded," Sainte said.
Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but the border between the two was never formally demarcated. The war that erupted in 1998 and claimed tens of thousands of lives.
A December 2000 peace agreement provided for an independent commission to rule on the position of the disputed 1 000-kilometre border while some 3 200 UN troops patrolled a 24-kilometre buffer zone between the two countries.
But Ethiopia refused to accept the panel's April 2002 decision, which awarded the town of Badme to Eritrea.
- AP