UN accuses Eritrea of “major breach” of ceasefire with Ethiopia
Oct 16, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — The United Nations accused Eritrea on Monday of moving 1,500 troops and 14 tanks into a buffer zone established after a 2 1/2-year border war with Ethiopia, “a major breach” of a ceasefire agreement reached in 2000.
Eritrean troops took over one U.N. checkpoint and forced a platoon of Jordanian peacekeepers to leave, U.N. officials said.
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Eritrean government to withdraw its troops from the buffer zone immediately, and to cooperate with the United Nations in restoring the ceasefire arrangements, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said.
Relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been consistently strained since Eritrea gained its independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 following a 30-year guerrilla war. Eritrea’s action raised the threat of renewed war between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbors.
A 3,800-strong U.N. peacekeeping force has been monitoring a 15-mile (24-kilometer) wide, 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) long buffer zone between Eritrea and Ethiopia under a December 2000 peace agreement reached in the Algerian capital, Algiers, that ended the border war.
In apparent frustration at Ethiopia’s refusal to implement a binding ruling on their disputed border, and the lack of U.N. action to pressure Ethiopia to comply, Eritrea banned U.N. helicopter flights in its airspace in October 2005. Two months later, it banned U.N. night patrols and expelled Western peacekeepers.
The international boundary commission’s ruling in 2002 awarded the town of Badme to Eritrea, but Ethiopia has refused to accept the decision even though under the Algiers accord both countries agreed it would be binding.
The U.N. peacekeeping mission reported that on Monday morning “the Eritrean Defense Forces have moved approximately 1,500 troops and 14 tanks into the Temporary Security Zone,” Dujarric said.
The Eritrean troops also took over one U.N. checkpoint in the western sector, he said.
U.N. peacekeeping officials said the buffer zone is divided into a western sector manned by a Jordanian battalion and a central sector manned by an Indian battalion. The checkpoint taken over by the Eritreans was manned by a platoon of Jordanian soldiers who were forced to leave, the officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
There was no immediate information on how far into the buffer zone the Eritrean troops and tanks had moved, the officials said. There was also no information on whether Eritrea had massed additional troops and military hardware on the border.
“The secretary-general is deeply concerned about the incursion into the zone,” Dujarric said.
“This development constitutes a major breach of the ceasefire and the integrity of the Temporary Security Zone,” he said. “It could seriously jeopardize the peace process and undermine the Algiers Agreements between Ethiopia and Eritrea, with potential consequences for the wider region.”
(AP)