Security Council censures Eritrea over Djibouti mission
September 17, 2008 (NEW YORK) — The UN Security Council today censured Eritrea for refusing to cooperation with UN investigation team tasked to probe border clashes between it and Djibouti last June.
Dijbouti accused Eritrean troops last June of attacking its positions on their shared border over looking strategic Red Sea shipping lanes. The fighting resulted in the death of several Djiboutian soldiers. Also the tiny Horne of Africa state complained to the Security Council and the other regional organisations.
The U.N. Security Council sent a fact finding mission to the region to determine the responsibilities of each side. However Asmara rejected the mission and refused to allow it to visit Eritrea.
“The members of the council welcomed the cooperation of the Djibouti authorities and regretted that the mission could not go to Eritrea,” the council president, Ambassador Michel Kafando of Burkina Faso, said following a Security Council meeting on Wednesday.
“Council members expressed their concern regarding the tension and militarization on the contentious border zone that may lead to open clashes,” Kafando further said.
Eritrea which blames the Security Council for failing to force Ethiopia to implement a decision on border demarcation, has bad relations with the UN. It imposed restrictions on UN peacekeeping force deployed on the Eritrean side of the joined border with Ethiopia. The UN decided last February to pull out its troops from the country.
But the French Ambassador at the UN Jean-Maurice Ripert told the reporters that the Security Council charged the Secretay General Ban Ki-Moon to get in contact with the Eritrean government.
The Council also called for demilitarization of the border zone.
However, the Eritrean Ambassador to the United Nations Araya Desta explained that his country rejected the U.N. fact-finding mission because the Council had already condemned Eritrea after last June clashes.
Djibouti and Eritrea are two of Africa’s smallest nations with populations of 820,000 and 4.7 million respectively.
Djibouti hosts two foreign military bases, including one of France’s biggest overseas contingents and a U.S. counter-terrorism task force of about 2,000 soldiers — many of them elite special forces who work with Ethiopian troops.
Former colonial power France signed a mutual defence pact with Djibouti after independence in 1977.
(ST)