UN peacekeepers losing purpose – Eritrea

Jan 3, 2005 (ASMARA) — If Ethiopia is not forced to demarcate its border with Eritrea, then U.N. peacekeepers monitoring the frontier are growing purposeless, a commentary on Eritrea’s official website said.

The latest criticism of the United Nations comes just before the Security Council is to hear a report on Eritrea and Ethiopia’s compliance with a resolution aimed at stopping a replay of their 1998-2000 border war.

At the end of the war, the Horn of Africa neighbours agreed under a peace plan to accept as “final and binding” the ruling of an independent commission on mapping out the border.

The commission has not been able to carry out the physical marking of the boundary because of the stalemate.

But Ethiopia has rejected the 2002 decision and Eritrea refuses to hold new talks, insisting that the international community should enforce the decision.

“Since the Boundary Commission has already delineated the border, the U.N. peacekeepers are there only to assist the commission in demarcating it,” the contributed commentary on the information ministry’s shabait.com website said.

But the Security Council does not want to enforce the decision, the article posted late on Monday said.

“Eritrea has thus no choice but to regulate the movement of the U.N. peacekeepers whose mission is becoming more and more purposeless by the day,” the article said.

Apparently frustrated by the stalemate and a belief that the international community is biased towards Ethiopia, Eritrea banned all U.N. helicopter flights in October and restricted peacekeepers’ ground patrols.

On Tuesday, the Security Council was expected to get a report on Eritrea and Ethiopia’s compliance with a November resolution ordering them to draw down troop levels on the border and for Eritrea to lift the restrictions on peacekeepers.

The U.N. Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) says the restrictions have reduced their ability to monitor the border, which they describe as “tense and potentially volatile.”

Eritrea’s economy and society are both suffering from the closure of its borders with neighbours, and from expensive preparations for possible conflict.

The Shabait article was written in response to a December paper by the International Crisis Group, which advised moving troops away from the border, border demarcation, and dialogue between the two countries.

(Reuters)