Ethiopia’s PM says Eritrea boosting military activity on border
Oct 19, 2005 (ADDIS ABABA) — Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Wednesday accused Eritrea of boosting military activity along the rivals’ increasingly tense border where Asmara has restricted monitoring by UN peacekeepers.
Meles said Addis Ababa was concerned by an apparent increase in the number of irregular militias operating in a de-militarized buffer zone on the Eritrean side of the border. Members of these are believed to be disguised Eritrean soldiers.
“We are aware of this development,” he told reporters at a news conference with visiting Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St Vincent and the Grenadines. “The scales have increased in recent days and this is a matter of concern to us.”
“We have reason to believe these so-called ‘militias’ are members of the Eritrean defense forces in a different uniform and a different guise,” Meles said.
He stressed that such moves by Eritrea were “not a new phenonenon” but urged the United Nations to prevent any violations of a 2000 peace deal that ended a bloody two-year border war between the neighboring Horn of Africa nations ahead of a binding border demarcation two years later.
Meles’ comments came as the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has complained bitterly that its border monitoring operation has been severely curtailed by an Eritrean ban on helicopter flights and restrictions on night ground patrols.
On Tuesday, a day after announcing the chopper ban had forced it to abandon nearly half of its 40 observation posts in the buffer zone, UNMEE said they were no longer able to carry out surveillance in almost 60 percent of its operating area.
UNMEE has said the Eritrean restrictions have left it unable to report with certainty about any military presence in the buffer zone on the Eritrean side of the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) frontier.
Despite protests from UNMEE and the UN Security Council, Eritrea has yet to explain the ban although diplomats believe it have been imposed to put pressure on the international community to force Ethiopia to accept a 2002 frontier delineation by the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission.
Ethiopia has thus far refused to accept the boundary ruling, prompting a surge in saber-rattling rhetoric from Asmara, which has warned it reserves the right to use force to recover land awarded it.
Meles said Eritrea’s restrictions on UNMEE operations should not be allowed to reach the point where the 2000 peace agreement is breached.
“As far as the operations of UNMEE are concerned it is on the basis of the Algiers agreement,” he said. “This agreement should not be violated and a violation of that agreement is a matter of serious concern to us.
“We hope the United Nations will take the necessary measures to restore the status quo,” Meles said.
(AFP/ST)