U.N. to pull Western peacekeepers from Eritrea

U.N. to pull Western peacekeepers from Eritrea


UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) -- The United Nations is getting ready to pull North American and European peacekeepers out of Eritrea and move them to Ethiopia as the Asmara government demanded, diplomats said on Wednesday.
The U.N. Security Council, in an informal session, decided to redeploy about 180 military observers and civilians from the United States, Canada, Western Europe and Russia from the northeast African country. The 15-nation body will issue a formal statement on its decision later in the day after consultation with member governments.
Last week, Eritrea ordered the Western peacekeepers to leave the country within 10 days, a move likely to make the world body's observation of the tense border with Ethiopia impossible.
In what appeared to be a last ditch effort to rescue the situation, the head of U.N. peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno arrived in Eritrea late Monday for talks.
But by noon Wednesday, he still had not met Eritrean officials, and his scheduled press briefing was cancelled.
Tensions along the unmarked Ethiopia-Eritrea border have grown in recent months with military maneuvers on both sides of the 1,000-kilometer (620 mile) frontier fueling fears of a repeat of a 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000 people.
Following Eritrea's October 5 ban on U.N. helicopter flights, Asmara's order for peacekeepers to leave by Friday will further hinder the U.N.'s ability to monitor border movements.
U.N. officials fear the expulsion would set a precedent, saying it is unacceptable in the long-run.
Eritrea's move was widely viewed as a sign of frustration that the international community has done to little to force Ethiopia, the Horn of Africa's dominant power and a key U.S. ally, to implement demarcation of their common border, despite a "final and binding" agreement to do so.
In a 2000 peace deal, the two Horn of Africa countries agreed an independent commission would rule on where their border should be, but Ethiopia later rejected the ruling.
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