Eritrea-Ethiopia close to war

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA CLOSE TO WAR 3.11.2005. 11:22:28
There is growing concern Eritrea and Ethiopia are on the verge of war after reports of troop movements along the tense border between the two Horn of Africa neighbors. United Nations chief Kofi Annan said in a statement that he was "extremely concerned about reports from the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) concerning movements of military personnel on both sides of the temporary security zone as well as irregular activities inside the zone." He added that the troop movements involved small and large military and paramilitary formations and movement of armor as well as air defense weapons. The secretary general called on arch-rival neighbors Ethiopia and Eritrea to show restraint and put "an immediate halt to any actions that may be misinterpreted by the other side or jeopardize the security arrangements which they agreed to" in a 2000 agreement. Mr Annan urged the UN Security Council and individual member states to "take decisive steps to defuse the escalating tension" between the two countries and offered UN help. "The information that we have is that there seems to have been (military) movements in the adjacent areas north of the security zone and on the Ethiopian side south of the security zone," said Jean-Marie Guehenno, head of UN peacekeeping operations. Russia's UN envoy Andrei Denisov, the incoming president of the Security Council for this month, said he shared Mr Annan's concerns. "The news coming from the ground is pessimistic, unfortunately," he added. The UN Security Council last week started discussing a draft resolution that calls on the two neighbours to implement a decision by an international commission on their border dispute. The draft, circulated among the council's 15 members, calls on both parties to implement completely and without delay the decision of the Eritrea-Ethiopia boundary commission and to create the necessary conditions for demarcation to proceed quickly. Asked about the status of the draft resolution, Denisov told a press briefing here: "We cannot wait until our experts draft a text. We should act expeditiously." "I am not ready to disclose specific details but I think that we will accelerate the discussions and maybe take some action in order to try to calm down the situation because it is very grave," he added. South Africa also voiced alarm Wednesday and called for urgent steps to prevent a new war between the two countries. "Basically, the United Nations' position now is that the situation is deteriorating and urgent action must be taken to prevent a new war between Ethiopia and Eritrea," South African Deputy Foreign Minister Aziz Pahad said in Cape Town. Over the past three weeks, since Asmara restricted UN patrols in a buffer zone in Eritrean territory, both Eritrea and Ethiopia have re-positioned soldiers and armaments on the frontier, raising the risk of a new war, according to the UN. The situation along the border has deteriorated from "stable" to "tense" and "potentially volatile," a UNMEE official told reporters in the Eritrean capital. Eritrea and Ethiopia fought a bloody two-year war over their 1,000-kilometer mostly barren border from 1998 to 2000 in which an estimated 80,000 people were killed. Under international pressure, the two neighbors signed a peace deal in Algiers in 2000 that required them to accept a new border drawn by an international panel. The panel's 2002 decision awarded the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea, but has never been fully accepted by Ethiopia which says it wants adjustments to avoid splitting up families on the border. In early October, over UN objections, Eritrea banned helicopter flights and imposed other restrictions on UNMEE troops monitoring the frontier, forcing them to abandon nearly half their observation posts. "It is important that both sides make the right moves. Our peacekeeping operation needs to be allowed to function but the peacekeeping operation cannot substitute for a process," Guehenno, a former French diplomat, said, referring to the Algiers agreement. SOURCE: World News