Ethiopia said on Tuesday that Eritrea’s deployment of troops and tanks to a demilitarised buffer zone along their common border was just the latest in series of violations of a 2000 truce.
Following United Nations chief Kofi Annan’s charge that Asmara had committed a major breach of the ceasefire, Addis Ababa said it was ”carefully monitoring” the situation in the so-called Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) along the frontier.
But the Ethiopian foreign ministry expressed little surprise at the development, maintaining that Eritrea had long shown its disdain for the Algiers Agreement that ended their bloody 1998/2000 border war.
”This is not the first time for Eritrea to violate the ceasefire agreement,” ministry spokesperson Solomon Abebe told Agence France-Presse. ”Eritrea has violated the ceasefire agreement repeatedly.”
He noted Asmara’s decision last year to restrict patrols by UN peacekeepers monitoring the border and its expulsion of UN staff from North America and European countries.
”All these are violations of the Algiers Agreement,” Solomon said.
”Regarding the current situation on the ground, Ethiopia is carefully monitoring the situation,” he said.
On Monday, Annan accused Eritrea of violating the deal by sending 1 500 troops and 14 tanks into the TSZ and called for their immediate withdrawal, saying the move jeopardised the pact and could affect regional security.
Eritrea dismissed the charge on Tuesday, admitting to the deployment but maintaining its forces where in the area only to harvest crops and blaming Ethiopia for being the true violator of the accord.
Asmara has long complained that Addis Ababa is breaking the agreement with its refusal to accept a binding 2002 border demarcation that was part of the peace deal and awarded the flashpoint frontier town of Badme to Eritrea. – AFP
