Ethiopia assures UN on border dispute

W O R L D N E W S S T O R Y
Ethiopia assures UN on border dispute
08 November 2005
ADDIS ABABA: Ethiopia will not strike first if a long-running border dispute with Eritrea escalates again, Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told a senior United Nations official yesterday.
Kanzo Oshima, a UN Security Council official in charge of peacekeeping, was visiting Ethiopia following military movements on both sides of the unmarked 1,000km frontier, over which the two African nations fought a two-year war from 1998.
He met Mesfin yesterday and will fly to the Eritrean capital Asmara on Tuesday.
"In my meeting with the foreign minister, he explained troop deployments made and assured me there is no intention on the part of Ethiopia to take action first. The posture is defensive in nature," Oshima told a news conference in Addis Ababa.
In the last two weeks, UN soldiers say they have observed military movements involving tanks, air defence missiles and troops near the border, fuelling fears of a repeat of the war between the Horn of Africa neighbours that killed 70,000 people.
Last month Eritrea banned UN peacekeepers from flying over its airspace, cutting off aerial reconnaissance, medical evacuation and resupply lines. The move has reduced the UN's ability to monitor the border.
Oshima said he would discuss the flight ban with the Eritrean authorities and report back to the Security Council.
"(My mission) is not about negotiating anything or discussion of a political nature, it is technical," he said.
"We will continue to call on both Ethiopia and Eritrea to undertake all necessary measures to prevent the current situation from deteriorating," Oshima said, adding that the situation was of "great concern" to the Security Council.
"We hope both governments act with restraint, refraining from any action. . . The situation is delicate and must be handled with delicacy and skill," he said.
Eritrea has been growing increasingly frustrated at the failure to implement a peace agreement with Ethiopia that was reached in December 2000.
In that accord, both sides agreed to demarcate their border as decided by an independent commission. But when the commission made its ruling, deciding that the flashpoint town of Badme actually belonged to Eritrea, Ethiopia rejected the decision.
Diplomats say new conflict would hurt a region that was once used as a base by al Qaeda and that continues to suffer drought and famine and the destabilising effect of anarchy in Somalia.

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