UN orders families of all staff to leave Eritrea

Nov 21, 2005 (ASMARA) — The United Nations has ordered the families of all its staff in Eritrea to leave the country amid soaring border tensions with arch-rival Ethiopia that have raised fears of a new war, senior UN officials Monday.

The move comes as a result of a weekend UN decision to raise the security threat throughout most of Eritrea to “level three,” which requires dependents of UN staffers to leave, they said.

“All regions in Eritrea have now been raised to the phase three security level, except the Gash Barka region which is in phase four,” a UN official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Gash Barka, in southwest Eritrea, is on the border with Ethiopia where only emergency UN operations are now allowed under the threat assessment rules.

Phase five is the highest security level and means all UN staff is evacuated.

A second UN official said the order, for which no timeframe has yet been set for implementation, would affect spouses and children of all UN agency employees in Eritrea.

Last month, dependents of staff with the UN peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) were told to leave the country after the operation decided to enforce and existing but frequently ignored policy on families.

UNMEE last week reported increasing movement of troops along both sides of the border where it said the situation “remains tense and potentially volatile.”

UNMEE has said its border surveillance ability has been cut by more than 60 percent since early October when Asmara banned its helicopter flights and limited ground patrols on its territory.

Eritrea took those measures while boosting saber-rattling rhetoric over Ethiopia’s refusal to accept a legally-binding border demarcation emanating from a 2000 peace deal that ended a bloody two-year war.

(AFP/ST)