Ethiopia, Eritrea get more time

2006-05-16 08:31

New York - The security council on Monday gave Ethiopia and Eritrea until the end of May to meet its demands that they accept the border drawn for them by outside experts and end all restrictions on United Nations peacekeepers.

Should they fail to meet the UN demands, a resolution adopted unanimously by the 15-nation council pledged to quickly scale back the UN force preserving a shaky peace between the two former foes.

The council had earlier set a mid-May deadline, but pushed it back two weeks to give Ethiopian and Eritrean officials the time to meet for a second time with the members of the international boundary commission that marked out their disputed border.

Border war killed 70 000 people

That meeting, part of a United States initiative to revive the peace process, had been set for Wednesday in London after an April 28 meeting date was postponed.

UN troops were sent to Ethiopia and Eritrea after a 2000 peace agreement ending their two-year border war, which killed some 70 000 people.

About 3 350 peacekeepers monitored a buffer zone along the 620-mile (1 000km) frontier separating the two Horn of Africa neighbours.

As part of the peace deal, both countries agreed to accept as final and binding a new border set out for them by the international commission.

UN helicopter flights banned

But, Ethiopia later rejected the border and insisted on further talks, prompting Eritrea to put restrictions on peacekeepers' movements including a ban on UN helicopter flights over its territory.

The restrictions, imposed in October 2005, had stoked tensions on both sides of the border by limiting peacekeepers' ability to monitor troop movements.

Council members had grown increasingly impatient with the two nations' refusal to comply with their demands.

Last January, UN secretary-general Kofi Annan set out six options for reconfiguring the UN force, ranging from full withdrawal to maintaining the mission in its present form.

In its resolution, the council said that if the two sides failed to fully comply with its demands, it would adjust the peacekeeping mission's "mandate and troop level ... by the end of May 2006".

- Reuters