Eritrea backs Sudan to oppose U.N. force in Darfur

July 14, 2006 (NAIROBI) — Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki said the United Nations has “no responsibility” sending peacekeepers to neighbouring Sudan which should be left to resolve internal problems on its own.

Khartoum rejects the idea of a U.N. peacekeeping force in its remote Darfur region, where tens of thousands have been killed and 2.5 million displaced in three years of conflict.

“The United Nations has no responsibility at all to intervene in the issue unless it wants to engage itself in acts of manoeuvres so as to accomplish other objectives,” Eritrean government Web site shabait.com reported Isaias as saying.

Eritrea itself has had tense relations with a U.N. peacekeeping force monitoring its border with Ethiopia, recently expelling Western staff and banning helicopter overflights.

“The Sudanese should resolve their problems themselves be it in Darfur or any other areas,” the Information Ministry site added in its post of an Isaias news conference on Wednesday.

Any outside support should be approved by Khartoum, it added.

Isaias was reported as saying the U.N. force on Eritrea’s border provided a lesson for Sudan as a “fruitless mission … for which an expenditure amounting to $1.2 billion had been wasted without accomplishing the set objective.”

Eritrea is angry at the United Nations and the West for failing to enforce a boundary ruling after a 1998-2000 war with Ethiopia.

Asmara’s support for Khartoum’s position on the proposed U.N. mission in Darfur was a further sign of generally warming ties. Asmara sent an envoy to Khartoum in June and is mediating talks between the government and eastern Sudanese rebels.

But Sudan summoned the Eritrean ambassador earlier this month after an attack by an alliance of Darfur rebels and political parties, based in Asmara, who rejected the May 5 peace deal signed by Sudan and most Darfur insurgents.

The two countries previously had no diplomatic relations as Khartoum accused Eritrea of supporting an array of Sudanese opposition and rebel groups, and Asmara accused Sudan of training an insurgent group operating on their shared border.

(Reuters)