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/ 27 October 2005

UN urges India, Jordan to stay in Ethiopia-Eritrea force

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. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan has asked the two countries to delay any decisions about staffing the UN mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea in the hope that a stalemate over the Eritrean restrictions can be resolved.

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/ 24 October 2005

Eritrea takes on world in unresolved border row

Five years after Eritrea fought a border war with Ethiopia, the tiny Horn of Africa nation has increasingly isolated itself, showing anger towards the international community and intensifying its sabre-rattling. This nation on the western banks of the Red Sea has been facing a litany of condemnation over its record on human rights and press freedom.

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/ 17 October 2005

UN vacates nearly half of monitoring posts in Eritrea

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 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.

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/ 31 August 2005

Eritrea says USAid banning is ‘irreversible’

Eritrea’s decision to bar the United States Agency for International Development (USAid) from operating in the impoverished Horn of Africa nation is ”irreversible,” the country’s national development minister said on Wednesday. ”We are uncomfortable with the operations of the USAid office in Asmara,” said Woldai Futur.

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/ 29 August 2005

Eritrean foreign minister dies

Eritrean Foreign Minister Ali Said died of a heart attack on Sunday, Eritrean Minister of Information Ali Abdu said. ”It’s a great loss for this country,” he said on Sunday in Asmara, the Eritrean capital. In 1965, Said, the son of a Muslim shepherd, received medical and military training in Syria before joining the Eritrean Liberation Front.

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/ 26 August 2005

Asmara ‘uncomfortable’ with US aid group

Eritrea has ordered a United States aid group operating in the country to halt its activities saying it was ”uncomfortable” with the group’s continued presence. Scott DeLisi, the US ambassador to the Horn of African nation said that Asmara had called on the United States Agency for International Development to wind-up its operations.

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/ 12 July 2005

Fifty-six killed in Eritrea as bus topples into ravine

At least 56 people were killed and 30 were seriously injured when a bus plunged over an embankment southwest of Asmara in what authorities believe was one of Eritrea’s worst road accidents, the state news agency Erina reported late on Monday. The bus, which police believe may have been overloaded, was travelling between the towns of Adi Quala and Maimene in southern Eritrea.

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/ 10 December 2004

Eritrea warns of border war with Ethiopia

Eritrea and Ethiopia could go to war again if the long-running border dispute between the two Horn of Africa nations is not settled, a senior Eritrean official warned on Thursday. ”We’ve been patient, but the current situation is not sustainable indefinitely,” Eritrean President Isaias Afeworki’s chief of staff said in Asmara.

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/ 29 October 2004

Massive food shipment arrives in Eritrea

A ship transporting 61 200 tonnes of wheat arrived at the Eritrean port of Massawa on the Red Sea on Friday to help about 600 000 people affected by drought, the United Nations World Food Programme said in a statement. The wheat will assist two-thirds of Eritrea’s population unable to meet daily food needs.

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/ 22 October 2004

War of words intensifies between Eritrea, Sudan

Relations between fractious neighbours Asmara and Khartoum reached a new low this week after Eritrea claimed to have uncovered a Sudanese-backed plot to assassinate President Issaiais Afeworki. Its announcement that it had arrested a ”terrorist” cell allegedly deployed to attack civilians as well as kill Afeworki sparked a furious reaction from Sudan.

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/ 21 September 2004

Eritrea unhappy with UN resolution

Eritrea has criticised as ”out of place” portions of last week’s United Nations Security Council resolution that renewed the mandate of a peacekeeping force deployed on its border with Ethiopia, saying it ”places both the law-abiding party [Eritrea] and the one that completely violates international law [Ethiopia] on an equal footing”.

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/ 3 August 2004

Shift in focus could aggravate Eritrean situation

About 1,9-million Eritreans currently in need of food aid could suffer even more because the world has shifted its focus to other crises such as Darfur in western Sudan, the United Nations has warned. Eritrea grew only 20% of the food it needed last year and has asked the international community for $120-million to offset the shortfall.

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/ 1 April 2004

UN envoy to assess Eritrean crisis

The United Nations secretary general’s special envoy for the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa, former Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, is in the Eritrean capital to assess the situation in the country, UN sources said on Thursday. Ahtisaari will have talks with Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki, among others.