UN warns of rising tensions in Ethiopia, Eritrea

UN warns of rising tensions in Ethiopia, Eritrea
ISN SECURITY WATCH (22/11/05) - The UN is to withdraw all non-essential staff and their families from Eritrea, warning that the threat conflict has created a potentially volatile climate of instability.
The UN’s Monday decision is a result of the security threat in the region being raised to “level three”, which requires all dependents of UN personnel to leave.
In southwest Eritrea, Gash Barka is already at level four. Phase five is the maximum security level, which requires a total evacuation.
The UN was reluctant to openly discuss the “levels” with ISN Security Watch on Tuesday, insisting that these issues were a matter of the utmost security and handled from New York.
“Many countries are in this position,” ISN Security Watch was told. “It [Eritrea] is quite serious.”
The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) reported increased activity along both sides of the 25-kilometer disputed border region where the situation is said to remain tense and potentially volatile.
Ethiopia is thought to have mobilized two divisions estimated to consist of a total of 12,000 troops this month just 40km from the border, adding to the five other divisions already positioned in the area.
Despite repeated calls by the UN, the Ethiopian government has steadfastly refused to recall the troops back to their barracks, insisting that the troops are deployed purely as a defensive measure.
The UN’s ability to monitor the border that separates the two sides has been compromised in recent weeks as helicopter flights over the region were banned by the Eritrean government.
“Our visibility of what is happening on the ground has continued to deteriorate,” UN Under Secretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guéhenno told reporters.
“It is probably about 40 per cent now that we can really monitor with some measure of confidence.”
UNMEE Chief-of-Staff Colonel Mohammed Iqbal told reporters last week that “a large number of troop movements have been noticed on both the Ethiopian and Eritrean sides”.
Speaking in Asmara, Colonel Iqbal said: “The ban imposed by the Eritrean Government on UNMEE helicopters is still in place. A large number of restrictions have been placed on the movement of UNMEE personnel inside the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) - this has meant that movements in certain areas and night patrols have been curtailed.”
The UN voiced its concern after eight peacekeepers were evacuated in “very difficult circumstances” as a result of the ban.
The lack of consensus by both nations forced the UN to concede that it could not “enforce a peace between those two countries”.
UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on Eritrea to lift the ban, which has forced UNMEE to evacuate 18 of its posts in the TSZ.
Annan warned that the situation could lead to another round of “devastating hostilities”. While calling for a lifting of the ban, he also urged the Security Council to address the underlying causes of the stalemate in the peace process between the two countries.
“The kind of posture that the respective armed forces are taking creates a very unstable and very dangerous situation,” Annan said.
However, the UN is to broker a one-day meeting in Nairobi on Friday with senior military officials from both sides attending in an attempt to diffuse the tension.
The UN believes that around 300,000 troops are deployed along the 1,000km frontier. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia 12 years ago after a 30-year war that never fully defined a boundary between the two East African nations.
(By Theodore Liasi in London)
http://www.isn.ethz.ch/news/sw/details.cfm?id=13591