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ETHIOPIA AND ERITREA BORDER DISPUTE CONTINUES December 16, 2005
<|eritria_ethiopia_border.jpg||left|>(SomaliNet) Ethiopia and Eritrea are still caught up amidst a messy decision to end the longstanding border conflicts between the countries. Events of the last couple of weeks indicate that both countries might well sort out their long-standing border dispute militarily again. Ethiopia earlier announced withdrawal of its troops from the tense Eritrea-Ethiopian border.
Certainly, Ethiopia and Eritrea indicate that they still have “a bigger fish to fryâ€. The UN has been caught at the center of it all. Eritrea last week ordered peacekeepers from the United States, Canada and European countries to leave the country within 10 days (by December 16). On October 5, Asmara banned UN helicopter flights as tensions along the unmarked Ethiopia-Eritrea border grew following the massing of troops on both sides of the 1,000 km border. The United Nations’ Security Council on November 23 produced a Greek-drafted resolution, which was unanimously adopted, threatening the two countries with sanctions.
A key demand by the Security Council was for Eritrea to rescind the various restrictions it has imposed on the freedom of movement of the UN
Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE), including its ban of helicopter flights in the buffer zone between the armies of the two states. The restrictions, which Eritrea began to impose since the beginning of October this year, have virtually made the existence of the 3,000 strong mission – boasting 336 Kenyans in its ranks – meaningless.
The UN tried to interact with the Eritrean authorities to obtain the rationale
behind their actions and to see whether it could do anything to address their concerns.
But the officials, from the president down, refused to answer the UN,
prompting Secretary General Kofi Annan to be uncharacteristically blunt
by describing the Eritrean government as a difficult one to work with. Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki counteracted by saying that both Annan and the Security Council “have forfeited their relevance in the matter.
According to Afewerki, both the Council and Mr. Annan can only assert their relevance if they act to force Ethiopia to accept the “final and binding†decision reached by the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC), a panel of five judges which was set up following the Algiers peace pact signed by the two parties in 2000.