The United Nations has urged India and Jordan, the top contributors to the UN peacekeeping force in Ethiopia and Eritrea, not to withdraw their troops over restrictions imposed by Asmara, officials said on Thursday.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked the two countries to delay any decisions about staffing the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) in the hope that a stalemate over the Eritrean restrictions can be resolved, they said.
The restrictions imposed earlier this month include a ban on UNMEE helicopter flights and limits on ground patrols. They have forced the mission to abandon nearly half of its 40 observation posts on Eritrean territory.
“Both India and Jordan have expressed concern about the safety and security of their peacekeepers here,” UNMEE spokesperson Gail Bindley Taylor-Sainte told reporters at a news conference in the Eritrean capital.
“The UN Secretary General has appealed to both India and Jordan to give us a little time to resolve the issue,” she said.
“It would be very serious for us if India and Jordan withdrew.”
The two nations provide about 2 000 of UNMEE’s nearly 3 300 troops who are tasked with monitoring the increasingly tense border between Ethiopia and Eritrea since the end of a bloody 1998-2000 war.
But since Eritrea adopted the restrictions amid rising anger at Ethiopia’s refusal to accept a binding 2002 border demarcation, UNMEE has been unable to operate in 60% of a buffer zone along the 1 000km frontier.
In addition, the helicopter ban has complicated urgent evacuations for injured UNMEE troops who must now be taken by ambulance over treacherous roads for medical treatment.
On Tuesday, UN chief Kofi Annan described the situation along the Ethiopia-Eritrea border as “seriously deteriorating” and called for international pressure to be put on the arch-rival neighbors to ease the tensions.
Annan urged the UN Security Council “to exert its maximum influence to avert a further deterioration of the situation and to ensure that the restrictions imposed on [UN peacekeepers] are lifted.” – AFP