United Nations peacekeepers resupplied their food but were running low on fuel on Tuesday after being forced to withdraw all personnel to the Eritrean capital, unable to get permission to cross into Ethiopia, UN officials said.
Eritrean authorities, continuing their ”lack of cooperation” with the United Nations, ordered the peacekeeping mission patrolling the Eritrea-Ethiopia border to ”regroup” at Asmara, Eritrea, the UN’s department of peacekeeping operations said on Tuesday.
About 1 460 UN troops had been spread among camps at Asmara, Barentu, Senafe and Assab. Eritrean authorities forced the UN peacekeeping mission to withdraw its 1 000 troops stationed at Barentu, Senafe and Assab, and to relocate them in Asmara.
”This move will facilitate further relocation out of the country,” the peacekeeping department said in a statement. Asmara has the nation’s only international airport.
In addition, personnel and two flatbed trucks with armoured personnel carriers have been stuck in the far western border post of Om Hajer since Sunday. ”Eritrean authorities continue to prohibit their departure,” the UN peacekeeping department said.
Troops were able to resupply their food through the contractor that had been providing rations, UN peacekeeping officials said, but their diesel fuel was still in short supply.
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said last week that Eritrea was obstructing the temporary relocation of the UN peacekeepers into Ethiopia and restricting their fuel and food supplies for the peacekeepers.
Eritrea’s UN ambassador, Araya Desta, said his government would allow the peacekeepers to leave Eritrea only after the Ethiopians have ”withdrawn from our sovereign territory”. He insisted the peacekeepers had adequate supplies of food, though not enough diesel fuel.
Eritrea and Ethiopia have been feuding over their border since Eritrea gained independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war.
The action by Eritrea defied a UN Security Council statement Friday demanding the nation resume providing fuel and food and allow UN troops to move freely into Ethiopia.
The council said it strongly condemned Eritrea’s failure to cooperate with the peacekeepers monitoring the disputed border with Ethiopia.
A ceasefire agreement in 2000 that ended a two-a-half year war between the two countries required both sides to allow an international boundary commission to rule on the disputed border. But Ethiopia has refused to hand over any territory after the commission ruled in April 2002 that the key town of Badme should go to Eritrea.
Eritrea banned UN helicopter flights in its airspace in October 2005 in apparent frustration at Ethiopia’s refusal to implement the ruling and the lack of UN action to press Ethiopia to comply. Two months later, it banned UN night patrols and expelled Western peacekeepers — and recently it started restricting fuel supplies. – Sapa-AP