The United Nations operation monitoring the increasingly tense border between Ethiopia and Eritrea said on Monday that Asmara’s ban on helicopter overflights would force it to vacate nearly half its posts on Eritrean territory.
The UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee) said a review of the ban had led it to conclude that it could no longer staff 18 of the smallest and most isolated of its 40 observation posts as well as one larger base it runs in Eritrea.
“As a result of the continuing ban on UN helicopter flights by the Eritrean Government, Unmee has carried out a review of the adverse impact of the ban on its own operational effectiveness and monitoring capability,” it said.
“From the assessment, it was deduced that the continuing occupation of small posts in isolated places has become untenable and operationally unviable,” it said in a statement.
“Out of a total of 40 posts that it has so far maintained, Unmee has now decided to vacate 18 of them and one team site of military observers,” it said, adding that troops from the abandoned sites would be shifted to the remaining posts.
It said the decision to leave the posts, of which both Asmara and Addis Ababa had been informed, would take effect immediately.
On Friday, Unmee officials said the restrictions had reduced their monitoring capability by 55% and that they were no longer able to verify with certainty troop levels on the Eritrean side of the border.
Unmee has 3 293 military personnel in the border area monitoring the frontier and implementation of a 2000 peace deal that ended a bloody two-year war between the arch-rival neighbours.
Since the beginning of the year, tensions along the 1 000km frontier have steadily risen, with reports of new troop deployments and security incidents raising fears of renewed conflict.
Asmara has not yet given an official reason for imposing the ban earlier this month over UN objections or for new restrictions slapped on Unmee ground patrols that limit the mission’s night operations.
But it has repeatedly warned that new conflict is looming because of Ethiopia’s refusal to accept a binding 2002 border delineation from an international panel set up as part of the pact that ended the war.
Diplomats in Asmara believe Eritrea may have imposed the helicopter ban to put more pressure on the international community to force Ethiopia to accept the boundary decision.
Eritrea has repeatedly said that the current situation is not sustainable and warned it held the right to forcibly recover Eritrean territory currently occupied by Ethiopia.
On Saturday, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned Eritrea about its sabre-rattling rhetoric but said he was ready for talks about implementing the border delineation, which he insists must be adjusted to as not to split families.
Last month, the UN Security Council renewed Unmee’s mandate until March 15 and called for the implementation of the boundary commission’s decision “without further delay”.
Then on October 6, it rebuked Eritrea for the helicopter ban and called on Asmara “to immediately reverse its decision and to provide Unmee with the access, assistance, support and protection required for the performance of its duties”. – AFP