11 February 1999
SECURITY COUNCIL CALLS FOR END TO ETHIOPIA, ERITREA FIGHTING
(Also seeks end to arms sales to region) (400) By Judy Aita USIA United Nations Correspondent UNITED NATIONS -- Condemning "the recourse to the use of force" by Ethiopia and Eritrea, the United Nations Security Council February 10 demanded an immediate halt to the hostilities, particularly air strikes in the disputed border area. Unanimously adopting a resolution during a formal session, the council also strongly urged states to end all sales of arms and ammunition to both sides, but stopped short of imposing a mandatory arms embargo. Diplomats suggested privately, however, that a mandatory arms embargo may be imposed at a later date. Before the formal session, the council was briefed privately by Ambassador Mohamed Sahnoun, the U.N. special envoy to Ethiopia and Eritrea. Sahnoun was sent to the region in late January to help resolve the dispute over a 150-square-mile (390-square-kilometer) piece of land called Badme. Both sides have resumed fighting, shattering a U.S.-brokered moratorium of last June. "Military buildups of the last few months have reached such a proportion that we might be...witnessing soon the first high-tech war in Africa," Sahnoun told a press conference before the council meeting. "Both sides have purchased sophisticated fighter airplanes...for bombing purposes. It is a disaster," he said. Sahnoun said that he and world leaders have been urging the two sides to give diplomatic opportunities a chance; the alternative, he made plain, is full-scale war. "I would like to believe that despite the complex challenges they are facing that they will be able to heed the entreaties of many of their friends around the world," the U.N. envoy said. "I can understand some of the ethnic internal conflicts I have been dealing with," he said. "But I cannot understand that two African, independent states who seem to have a modern leadership, who seem to be doing very important strides internally in terms of creating a consensus of gradually reaching a democratic system...that these two countries can come to fight each other is absolutely not understandable," Sahnoun said. The council also demanded that the two countries resume diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to their dispute, suggesting that the Organization of African Unity (OAU) framework agreement as well as its previous resolutions remain "a viable and sound basis" for a peaceful settlement.
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