Eritrea says troops and tanks in buffer zone to harvest crops

NAIROBI
AFP 17/10/2006
Eritrea dismissed UN charges its deployment of troops and tanks to a demilitarized buffer zone between it and arch-rival Ethiopia was a "major breach" of a six-year-old truce.
Asmara said it had moved 1,500 soldiers and 14 tanks into the so-called "Temporary Security Zone" (TSZ) on Monday to harvest crops and blamed Ethiopia for forcing it to use its military to do the work of civilian farmers.
And, it maintained the real "major breach" of the 2000 peace deal that ended Eritrea and Ethiopia's bloody two-year war was Addis Ababa's refusal to accept a binding new border demarcation that emanated from the agreement.
But Ethiopia said the deployment was simply the latest in series of Eritrean violations of the accord and said it was "carefully monitoring" the situation along the border with its much smaller northern neighbor.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu did not dispute reports from UN peacekeepers monitoring the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) frontier about the size and composition of the deployment but insisted it was not "provocative."
"This time is harvest time after the summer and the army is there to engage in the harvest," he told АFР by phone from Asmara, saying crops grown in the arid region included wheat, buckwheat and vegetables.
"This is part of a government development project," he said. "The only reason they are there is for the harvest. If the harvest is not taken, it will be lost and that would have severe consequences for our food security program."
Ali Abdu said the troops moved into the western part of zone with tanks because "these are soldiers and if they are going to move from point A to point B, they have to take their equipment."
He added that if Ethiopia had accepted the 2002 border redrawing of an international panel as it was required to do by the peace deal, Eritrea would not have to rely on its armed forces to carry out the harvest.
On Monday, UN chief Kofi Annan said through a spokesman that the troop movement into the zone "constitutes a major breach of the ceasefire and the integrity of the TSZ" that "could seriously jeopardize the peace process."
He said such actions could also have "potential consequences for the wider region" and urged Eritrea to immediately withdraw its forces from the zone.
But Ali Abdu dismissed Annan's concerns, which came as tensions rise between Ethiopia and Eritrea over developments in Somalia, where they have taken opposite sides in a struggle between powerful Islamists and a weak government.
"To the contrary, the major breach is the refusal of the Ethiopian regime to accept the final and binding agreement," he said.
Eritrea has long complained that Ethiopia is violating the 2000 peace deal by refusing to accept the new delineation and accuses the United Nations of failing to put enough pressure on Addis Ababa to accept it.
The demarcation awarded the flashpoint border town of Badme to Eritrea and while Ethiopia has said it accepts the decision in principle, it wants revisions, a stance Asmara says is illegal.
"The main point is Ethiopia's refusal to accept the rule of law and that it has been giving impunity," Ali Abdu said.
To show its displeasure, Asmara last year slapped restrictions on patrols by the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) in its territory and expelled all of its European and North American staff.
In Addis Ababa, Ethiopian foreign ministry spokesman Solomon Abebe seized on those two previous steps and said Monday's deployment was just the most recent in a string of Eritrean violations.
"All these are violations of the Algiers Agreement," he told АFР. "Eritrea has violated the ceasefire agreement repeatedly. Regarding the current situation on the ground, Ethiopia is carefully monitoring the situation."
Source: www.bakutoday.net/view.php?d=28083