UN 'to review Eritrea mission'
2005-12-16 10:29
New York - Eritrea's restrictions on UN peacekeepers have put them in a "totally unacceptable" situation, and the UN will have to review the mission's future if things don't improve, a top peacekeeping official said on Thursday.
Undersecretary-General Jean-Marie Guehenno would not say if that meant the mission, made up of 3 300 military observers and staff, could be shut down, but diplomats in New York said it was a possibility.
"The situation on the ground is that it is totally unacceptable," Guehenno said. "We are doing our job. We are not doing our job the way we would like to do it."
The UN began to withdraw 180 peacekeeping staff from Eritrea on Thursday, acceding to an Eritrean demand that all peacekeepers from North America and Europe, including Russia, pull out.
About 100 of those being withdrawn are from other nations - a signal to Eritrea that the UN won't be dictated to, Guehenno said.
"We don't want to have the authorities of Eritrea tell us which nationalities we are going to relocate," he said.
The Eritrea-Ethiopia mission was established after a border war between the Horn of Africa neighbours. A peace agreement in 2000 set up a commission to rule on the position of the disputed border, while UN troops patrolled a 24-kilometre buffer zone.
Ethiopia has refused to implement the commission's April 2002 ruling, which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea.
The Eritrean demand for the withdrawal came amid mounting concern that the two sides were massing troops as a prelude to a new war.
Eritrea has also banned UN helicopter flights and vehicle movements at night on its side of the buffer zone.
Guehenno said Eritrean authorities had refused to meet with him during his visit, which ends on Friday.
He stressed that the staff relocation was only temporary, and that if Eritrea didn't back down, the United Nations would review the entire mission.
Several UN diplomats in New York said one option will be to close down the mission entirely.
On Wednesday, the Security Council agreed to the relocation and warned that the restrictions "will have implications" for the mission's future if they are not lifted.
- AP