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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ERITREA: UN envoy in talks on closure of outreach centres

ADDIS ABABA, 8 August 2003 (IRIN) - Eritrea’s United Nations representative has been urged to help quash demands by his government to close down two outreach centres run by the UN peacekeeping force.

Ahmed Tahir Baduri held talks with senior UN officials, who are battling to keep the two centres open, at the peacekeeping headquarters in New York on Wednesday.

The Eritrean government has told the UN’s Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) to close the centres in the capital Asmara, and Barentu in the west of the country. The centres are meant to inform the local population of UNMEE's activities in Eritrea and Ethiopia.

Officials in Asmara told the peacekeeping force the centres were “not necessary” and that they “don't like some of the things young children are reading” in them.

UNMEE spokeswoman Gail Bindley Taylor Sainte told a video-linked press briefing in Addis Ababa and Asmara that although the centres were not currently closed, Eritrean guards were preventing locals from using them.

“There have been discussions with the Eritrean ambassador in New York and we will now wait to see what happens after that,” she said. “These centres, if they close, would be a loss.”

She added that UNMEE was now waiting for “further instructions” from New York but that if Eritrea continued to prevent locals from using the centres, they would have to close.

Meanwhile the independent Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) is to meet in New York early next week to discuss demarcation of the contested 1,000 km border which has been delayed twice.

Demarcation is now due to start in October, but Ethiopia is unhappy over the border ruling which places contested territories in Eritrea.

Sainte said that that Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, the UN’s special representative, would be attending the meeting as an observer.

Theme(s): (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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