UN forced to leave two Eritrean border posts
Oct 12, 2005 (ASMARA) — U.N. peacekeepers were forced to withdraw from two posts in the buffer zone between Ethiopia and Eritrea and more withdrawals are possible after U.N. helicopters were grounded last week, a U.N. commander said on Wednesday.
Eritrea imposed the ban last week on U.N. reconnaissance flights over a 15-mile (25-km) wide buffer zone along the 1,000-km (620-mile) unmarked border, fuelling fears Asmara was trying to hide a possible troop mobilisation for a new war.
“We have to vacate these (posts) because they were isolated posts,” Major-General Rajender Singh, commander of the U.N. mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) told Reuters.
“Whenever you have posts which are located far away, you should be able to support them. We have not yet decided on any other withdrawal for the time being, but I do not rule it out,” he said in an interview.
One of the U.N. posts is at Fawlina, where unidentified gunmen men shot dead an Eritrean militiaman in April and the other is at Bada.
Asmara has given no reason for the ban, which UNMEE says reduces their monitoring capacity by half and means the posts cannot be looked after.
The move by the tiny Red Sea state is worrying regional governments who dread a repeat of the neighbours’ 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000 people.
MOVEMENT IN THE ZONE
Diplomats in Asmara say movements of personnel into the buffer zone have taken place in recent months.
“We keep finding some additional people inside the temporary security zone – some of them are militia, some of them are civilians,” said Singh.
“There are no confirmed reports of any soldiers,” he said, adding that he had seen no new activities in the area.
“There is no cause for worry as far as this factor is concerned,” he said.
Singh declined to say what would happen if U.N. helicopters remained grounded.
“We would have to function with degraded capabilities, and what implications would that have on the peace process? I don’t think I am the right man to answer,” he said.
Last month, angered by the continued lack of demarcation of its border with Ethiopia, Eritrea warned it might rekindle war with Ethiopia.
Under a peace treaty that ended their conflict in 2000, both sides agreed to accept the ruling of an independent boundary commission.
But Ethiopia rejected the April 2002 ruling which gave the flashpoing town of Badme to Eritrea and refused dialogue with Eritrea and the commission in February this year.
On Monday, UNMEE ordered friends and families of peacekeepers to leave, saying the move was just an enforcement of an existing rule.
(Reuters)