Ethiopia, Eritrea trade accusations as UN try to cool tension
Nov 25, 2005 (NAIROBI) — Ethiopia and Eritrea renewed mutual charges of violations of a five-year old peace accord as a UN-hosted meeting in Nairobi on Friday failed to ease escalating border tensions, officials said.
Senior military officers from the arch-rival Horn of Africa neighbours traded accusations and gave no hint their countries would comply with UN Security Council demands that both back down under the threat of sanctions.
The exchange came in closed-door talks in the Kenyan capital chaired by the commander of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), two days after the council issued its threat amid rising fears of new conflict.
“We’re passing through very defining moments,” UNMEE commander Major-General Rajender Singh told the delegations, led by Ethiopian Major-General Yohannes Gebremeskel and Eritrean Colonel Zecarias Ogbagaber.
It was “very important during these moments” that both governments hold to their commitments, Singh said, according to a statement released after the meeting late Friday.
He repeated UNMEE’s assessment that the situation along the desolate border, over which Addis Ababa and Asmara fought a bloody 1998-2000 war that claimed 80,000 lives, had become “tense and potentially volatile”.
Singh also “thanked both countries for exercising restraint throughout this tense period and expressed hope they would continue to do so.”
According to UNMEE, the talks at a Nairobi hotel had been held in a “cordial atmosphere” but a summary of points made at the meeting by the Ethiopian and Eritrean officers indicated little progress had been made.
Yohannes slammed Eritrea for imposing restrictions last month on UNMEE peacekeepers monitoring a de-militarized buffer zone that hugs the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) border inside Eritrean territory.
“He alleged that there is a large number of (Eritrean) soldiers inside the Temporary Security Zone as the vacuum created by UNMEEs reduced capability is being exploited by the Eritreans,” UNMEE said.
“He said that if allowed to continue, it may have grave consequences.”
In response, Zecarias repeated longstanding Eritrean complaints that the situation was only tense because of Ethiopia’s refusal to accept a binding border demarcation that emanated from the 2000 Algiers peace deal.
Zecarias denied the Ethiopian charges, said the effect of Eritrea’s ban on UNMEE helicopter flights was exaggerated and lamented the world body’s “lack of concern” about the continuing stalemate, the statement said.
The statement made no mention of UNMEE’s report on Thursday that a small group of Ethiopian troops had temporarily breached the buffer zone.
UNMEE has reported troop movements on both sides of the border in recent weeks, something an African Union observer at Friday’s meeting of the Military Coordination Commission, the only forum the two countries have to communicate directly, said was of great concern.
(AFP/ST)