UN to host Ethiopia-Eritrea talks on Friday

UN to host Ethiopia-Eritrea talks on Friday
Senior Military commanders from Ethiopia and Eritrea will meet on Friday for talks that the United Nations hope would ease tensions along their border, where large-scale movement of troops and military hardware continue, U.N. officials said last week.
Eritrean and Ethiopian officers will gather for one-day talks in neighboring Kenya this Friday, the first such meeting since the U.N. warned that the situation near the border is "tense and potentially volatile," said Gail Bindley-Taylor Sainte, spokeswoman for the U.N. mission to the two countries. The talks will be chaired by the commander of the U.N. peacekeeping force there, Maj. Gen. Rajinder Singh, who last month said a new war could erupt if nothing is done to try and ease rising tensions.The talks come as the U.N. mission say large troop movements are still continuing on both sides of the border. The two are becoming increasingly suspicious of the other after Eritrea restricted peacekeeping operations on the buffer zone.Unstable situation"We don't believe that a war is imminent, but we believe that the kind of posture that the respective armed forces are taking creates a very unstable and very dangerous situation."U.N. peacekeepers monitor a buffer zone between the two countries as part of the five-year-old peace deal ending their two-year border war that killed more than 70,000 people. But both sides have moved forces and weapons toward the border after Eritrea banned U.N. helicopter flights over its territory on Oct. 5 and imposed other restrictions on ground movements, hampering peacekeepers' ability to monitor troop movements, deliver supplies to their bases and carry out medical evacuations and other important operations.Eritrea acted out of frustration over Ethiopia's refusal to implement the boundary commission ruling, and the international community's failure to put pressure on Ethiopia to do so.Under the peace deal, both sides agreed to accept the commission's judgment on the location of the frontier as final and binding. But when the commission awarded the key border town of Badme to Eritrea, Ethiopia balked and the peace process has been at a stalemate ever since.
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