Eritrea arrests UN staff

2006-08-30 22:38

Nairobi - Eritrea has arrested several members of the UN peacekeeping force monitoring its tense border with Ethiopia for allegedly attempting to smuggle people out the country, officials said.

The Eritrean information ministry said an unspecified number of personnel from the United Nations' mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) were detained on Monday after being caught hiding youths and property in official vehicles.

"Such action on the part of members of the UN peacekeeping mission in violation of their mandate constitutes a grave crime and, as such, the apprehended UNMEE members would face justice," the ministry said in a statement posted on its official website late on Tuesday.

Cash bribes

It gave few details of the incident, but claimed that the detained UN staff had been given large cash bribes by each of the people they were allegedly trying to smuggle.

"It is to be noted that UNMEE members had on previous occasions tried to illegally move people out of the country," the statement said.

Efforts to contact the UN mission at its offices in Asmara and in Addis Ababa were not immediately successful.

UNMEE and Eritrea have long had strained relations, particularly during the past year when tensions rose between Asmara and Addis Ababa over the failure to fully implement a 2000 peace deal that ended their bloody two-year border war.

But aside from that issue, Eritrea has frequently clashed with the mission and arrested more than a dozen of its local employees accusing them of trying to avoid compulsory national service.

- AFP