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| Africa Horn | |
| Eritrea Refuses Meeting With U.N. Official | |
| 2005-12-14 | |
| ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) - Eritrean officials refused to meet the U.N. peacekeeping chief, who visited the country Tuesday in an effort to defuse tensions along the Eritrea-Ethiopia border amid fears of a new war, a U.N. official said. Both Horn of Africa nations have been massing troops near the border, while Eritrea has been restricting the work of U.N. peacekeepers. Eritrea is angry that the United Nations has failed to force Ethiopia to withdraw its troops from a town awarded to Eritrea by an international commission set up under a 2000 peace agreement. U.N. Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno was pressing for Eritrea to reverse its order for the expulsion of U.S., Canadian and European members of the U.N. mission monitoring the tense border, the U.N. official said. Eritrean officials were unlikely to meet Guehenno anytime soon, the official said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with journalists. On Wednesday, the United Nations was to begin pulling out the first 20 of the 180 peacekeeping staff affected by last week's expulsion order. The nearly 3,300-strong U.N. force is composed of peacekeepers and military observers from some 40 countries. The largest contingent, with more than 1,500 troops, is from India. Earlier Tuesday, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his country needed to maintain enough troops along border to keep Eritrea from starting a new war. ``If the Eritrean government believes that it can ensure victory, there is no doubt it will do what it can to wage a war,'' Meles said in a report to parliament. ``The only alternative is to show the Eritrean government they will not win anything if a war is started.'' Diplomats estimate the two nations have 380,000 troops along the 600-mile border - about 130,000 on the Ethiopian side and 250,000 on the Eritrean side.
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| Posted by:Steve White |