The United Nations Security Council voted unanimously on Tuesday to keep a peacekeeping force along the Eritrean-Ethiopian border for six more months until March 15 2005.
The 4 200-strong force monitors a 25km buffer zone along the 1 000km border separating the two armies. The two countries fought a two-and-a-half year border war at the end of the 1990s that ended with a ceasefire in 2000.
Ethiopia has refused to accept the ruling of an international boundary commission on where the frontier should run, and the world body says Ethiopia has prevented the border panel from doing its work.
The council resolution adopted on Tuesday expressed concern at the lack of progress in drawing the border and urged Ethiopia to show the political will and accept the panel’s decision, and let experts demarcate the frontier.
The border war between the Horn of Africa neighbours killed more than 100 000 people. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 in a referendum after a 30-year guerrilla war. – Sapa-AP