Eritrea renews dismissal of UN mission chief

Feb 17, 2007 (ASMARA) — Eritrea has reiterated its rejection of the chief of a United Nations mission monitoring their tense border with arch-foe Ethiopia.

In a strongly-worded letter to the UN chief Ban Ki-moon, Asmara accused the world body of double standards and bias toward Ethiopia over the appointment of Azouz Ennifar as head of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) in acting capacity.

Asmara says that while the UN accepted Ethiopian objections to one proposed candidate, Eritrea’s opposition to Ennifar was ignored, according to the letter posted on a pro-government website late Friday.

“Eritrea’s legally and diplomatically accepted behaviour of rejecting Ambassador Ennifar’s appointment was not honoured,” said the letter, dated February 1.

“Such approach by the secretariat of the United Nations is unacceptable and it is the manifestation of a double standard.”

The Tunisian diplomat was appointed to the position last August, but was forced to leave Eritrea a month later and relocate to Addis Ababa.

Ethiopia and Eritrea continue to blame each other over the failure to resolve the simmering border tension since the signing of a 2000 peace deal that ended a very bloody two-year border war.

On Thursday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi chided the UN Security Council for failure to take action against Eritrea for deploying troops and tanks into the frontier’s buffer zone l;ast year.

But Eritrea has long complained that Ethiopia violates the peace deal by refusing to accept the binding ruling by an international boundary commission and accuses the UN of failing to put enough pressure on Addis Ababa to accept it.

Last November, a UN-appointed Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission ordered both sides to solve its six-year border dispute within a year or face the UN taking the matter out of their hands.

(AFP)