Eritrea rejects UN criticism over peacekeeper death
Mar 3, 2006 (ASMARA) — Eritrea Thursday rejected criticism by the U.N. secretary-general, who urged the country to lift a ban on U.N. helicopter flights in its airspace after the death of a peacekeeper who had to be evacuated on a longer flight to Ethiopia.
Information Minister Ali Abdu said Kofi Annan’s statement was intended to divert attention from Ethiopia’s four-year refusal to let an independent commission demarcate their common border.
Yemani Ghebremeskel, the director of Eritrea’s president’s office, said Eritrea regrets the death of the peacekeeper, but “trying to politicize it is unacceptable.”
Indian Lance Corporal Kamble Ramesh Annappa, who died after a heart attack, was the first U.N. peacekeeper to die since Eritrea banned U.N. helicopter flights in its airspace Oct. 5, in frustration at the UN Security Council’s failure to press Ethiopia to implement the border ruling.
A 3,800-strong U.N. peacekeeping force has been monitoring a 1,000-kilometer temporary security zone between Ethiopia and Eritrea under a December 2000 peace that ended a two year border war between the Horn of Africa neighbors.
According to the U.N. mission, Ramesh Annappa suffered cardiac arrest in the early hours of Wednesday at the Indian Battalion Headquarters at Adigrat in the Ethiopian side of the buffer zone. He could have been flown to the Eritrean capital, Asmara, in 45 to 50 minutes but because of the Eritrean ban, a U.N. aircraft had to be flown from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, to the town of Mekele to evacuate him.
Annappa died soon after arriving at the hospital in Addis Ababa, about 12 hours after he became ill, the U.N. mission said.
Last week, the U.S., the U.N., the European Union, the AU and Algeria – the five parties who witnessed and guaranteed the December 2000 truce – called for the border commission to convene a meeting with Ethiopia and Eritrea and work out technical details on marking the border. The U.N. Security Council backed their call.
U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said Thursday a U.S. initiative aimed at settling the dispute is focused on putting together a meeting of the boundary commission in London late next week.
Presidential aide Yemani said: “We have received the invitation, we are looking at the situation, but no decision has been made” on whether Eritrea would send representatives because officials want to confirm the meeting won’t seek to alter the decision of the boundary commission.
“You are dealing with a decision that has been rendered four years ago. The demarcation directions have been worked out three years ago – all the practical details have been worked out. What is remaining now is purely implementation,” he said.
“We have a decision that is legal, technical, that is final and binding. So, the whole concept of a diplomatic initiative would, in effect, undermine the agreement,” he said.
“The appropriate diplomatic initiative would be to persuade the party that is violating the law, a party that is reneging on its commitments to uphold the ruling.”
Eritrea would accept the U.S. initiative if it is intended to push for the implementing the decision as it stands, Yemani said.
“We have sent a delegation (to the U.S.), we have had discussions, we have put forward our views…but nobody has explained the initiative very, very clearly, nobody knows what the objectives are,” he said.
(ST/AP)