The United Nations on Thursday began pulling North American and European peacekeepers out of Eritrea, 24 hours ahead of a deadline for their expulsion as ties between Asmara and the world body plummeted.
Amid soaring tensions along the Ethiopian-Eritrean border and fears of a new war between the arch-rivals, the first of nearly 200 expelled peacekeepers headed to Addis Ababa, where they have been temporarily reassigned.
”We are at a critical time,” said Jean-Marie Guehenno, the head of UN peacekeeping operations who had for three days unsuccessfully sought meetings in Asmara to press for the expulsion order to be reversed.
Eritrean officials, however, refused to see him, a situation he told reporters was ”unfortunate” shortly after the first of three flights bringing the affected peacekeepers to Ethiopia departed Asmara.
”The overall political situation is certainly not good,” Guehenno said. ”Never has this issue been so much at the centre of the attention of the international community, and at the same time, never has there been such a great crisis for the mission.”
”We really are at a crossroads,” Guehenno said, referring to the status of the UN mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (Unmee), which is tasked with monitoring the border as well as relations between the UN and Eritrea.
On Wednesday, the UN Security Council decided to withdraw Unmee’s 180 Eritrea-based US, Canadian, European and Russian staff in line with Asmara’s order, as well as other personnel at the mission’s headquarters here.
The council condemned the order as ”unacceptable” and renewed demands that all restrictions imposed by Eritrea on the mission, including an October ban on helicopter flights, be rescinded.
It said failure to do so would have ”implications for Unmee’s future”, hinting that the operation might be shut down.
Guehenno said the 15-member Security Council will make ”critical decisions” about Unmee in January after assessing the impact of the expulsions, which are believed to be the first directed at UN peacekeepers from specific nations.
”In my 10 years as the head of peacekeeping, I have not been confronted with a similar situation,” he said.
Diplomats say the expulsions are a sign of Eritrea’s increasing anger at the failure of world powers to push Ethiopia to accept an international ruling on the border in 2002 that awarded the flashpoint town of Badme to Asmara.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody 1998-2000 war over the border that claimed about 80 000 lives and Asmara says new conflict is looming because Addis Ababa has rejected the binding border demarcation.
The expulsions are the latest in a series of restrictive measures Eritrea has imposed on Unmee, which says the moves have badly damaged its ability to monitor the border that is says is ”tense and potentially volatile”.
Unmee has 3 794 peacekeepers and support staff on both sides of the 1 000km border, many of whom are based in Eritrea and patrol a 25km buffer zone in Eritrean territory. — Sapa-AFP