Eritrea not preparing for war, U.N. commander says

ADDIS ABABA, Sept 23 (Reuters) – The force commander of a U.N. peacekeeping mission on the Eritrea-Ethiopia border said on Thursday there were no signs Eritrea was preparing to launch a new round of war with its neighbour.

An exiled Eritrean opposition leader accused Eritrea’s president last week of mobilising for a fresh conflict in the hope of galvanising domestic support in a country where memories are still raw of losses in the neighbour’s 1998-2000 border war.

But Major-General Rajender Singh, the military commander of a 4,000-strong U.N. peacekeeping force, told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa: “I did not see any indication that Eritrea was preparing for another round of war with Ethiopia.”

Fears a fresh conflict might erupt between the Horn of Africa countries have risen in the past year, following Ethiopia’s rejection of a new boundary drawn up by an independent commission under a peace deal signed in 2000.

Ethiopia has called for dialogue to resolve the dispute, while Eritrea says other countries should pressure Ethiopia into accepting the ruling, which it had agreed to accept as “final and binding” under the terms of the peace deal.

The head of the U.N. peacekeeping mission, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, said he believed the two neighbours’ reassurances that they would not resume fighting.

“The two countries went to war in 1998-2000. There is a lot of bitterness in a war which resulted in shedding lots of blood,” he told the news conference.

“But the two countries have said that they would not resort to war hereafter. I am going to trust them. People should not have sleepless nights on this,” he said.

Osman Abubakr, leader of the outlawed Eritrean National Alliance, told Reuters in London last week that Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki was readying for a new war because he had lost support at home.