Ethiopia, Eritrea risk starting new war – UN envoy

OTTAWA, March 24 (Reuters) – Ethiopia and Eritrea run the risk of starting a new war over a long-running border dispute, with tensions being fueled by irresponsible arms sales to both impoverished African nations, a senior United Nations official said on Thursday.

An Eritrean soldier stands on a mound of earth behind his front line trench at Tsorona.

“Time is running out. Both countries are acquiring additional arms, increasing the number of forces at their borders,” said former Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy, the special U.N. envoy for Ethiopia and Eritrea.

“I still believe however that war can averted,” he told Parliament’s foreign affairs committee in Ottawa.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-year border war from 1998 to 2000 in which more than 70,000 people died.

The conflict ended with a peace deal that set up a commission to determine where the border should lie. Ethiopia, which objects to some of the commission’s conclusions, recently moved troops into the buffer zone along the border.

Axworthy noted the two sides had adopted “a more military tone to the dialogue” and called on the international community to clamp down on arms sales to the two nations.

“There are a lot of countries who should know better who are making good profit off the arms sales and I think some effort through the (U.N. Security) Council to put some limitations on that would be well worth looking at,” he said.