Eritrea rejects UN plea to rescind ban on helicopter flights

Oct 23, 2005 (ASMARA) — Eritrea’s president has refused to lift a flight ban on UN peacekeeper’s helicopters, despite an appeal by secretary general Kofi Annan, diplomats said Sunday.

They said Eritrean President Isaias Affwerki had written to Annan expressing his unwillingness to overturn the ban, introduced earlier this month.

“I know the Eritrean president has sent a letter to Annan in which he refuses to lift the ban,” an Asmara-based diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Other diplomats confirmed this.

Annan wrote to Isaias on Tuesday, saying the ban severely inhibited the work of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), which has been deployed in a buffer zone on the Eritrean side of the border since the end of the last war between the Horn of Africa neighbours in 2000.

Asmara has yet to give an official explanation for the ban or for new restrictions slapped on UNMEE ground patrols that UN officials say have made it impossible for them to report with certainty about activity in the zone.

Eritrea has repeatedly warned that a new conflict is looming because of Ethiopia’s refusal to accept a 2002 ruling on the path of the border issued by an international panel in the Hague.

(AFP/ST)