UN gives US more time to resolve Eritrea-Ethiopia row

Feb 8, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — The U.N. Security Council on Wednesday put off deciding the fate of a peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea to give the United States more time to resolve a long-standing border dispute between the two nations.

The decision means the United States will have another month to get Ethiopia and Eritrea to agree at last on a definitive border, after which the mission’s mandate expires. Ethiopia has refused to accept a border ruling from 2002, and Eritrea late last year banned U.N. helicopter flights and expelled Western peacekeepers with the mission in apparent response.

The United States hopes that Eritrea will ease the restrictions on peacekeepers if the border dispute is settled. Otherwise, the Security Council will have to decide whether to scale back the peacekeeping mission.

“Obviously we hope that progress will be made and we won’t have to face that eventuality,” U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said after the Security Council discussed the issue Wednesday. “But one of the things we talked about in the council today was contingency planning for changing the configuration and deployment” of the mission.

Bolton said that in the coming weeks the United States would seek a meeting of witnesses to a 2000 peace accord between the two nations as a way to resolve the dispute. They are the United States, the European Union, the United Nations and the African Union.

He also wants a border demarcation commission to resume its work.

The United States launched its diplomatic initiative a month ago as tensions continued to rise between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The dispute has threatened to re-ignite war between the two nations on the Horn of Africa.

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but a border was never agreed to. Violence erupted again in 1998 and ended 2 1/2 years later after tens of thousands of people had been killed.

Under the 2000 peace agreement, both countries agreed to abide by an independent commission’s ruling on the position of the disputed 621-mile (1,000-kilometer) border, while U.N. troops patrolled a 15-mile (24-kilometer) buffer zone between the two countries.

But Ethiopia has refused to implement the international commission’s April 2002 ruling, which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea.

(ST/AP)