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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs Thursday 21 July 2005

ETHIOPIA-ERITREA: UNMEE warns of continuing border incidents

ADDIS ABABA, 21 Jul 2005 (IRIN) - The UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) has expressed concern over "continuing incidents of violence" along the disputed 1,000 km border between the countries.

At UN-hosted Military Coordination Commission talks on Saturday between the armed forces of Eritrea and Ethiopia in Nairobi, Kenya, the commander of the UN peacekeeping forces in the region, Maj Gen Rajender Singh, called on both sides to try and resolve the hostility.

"He expressed concern over reports of continuing incidents of violence, noting an increase in the number of cases of cattle rustling in the border area," UNMEE said in a statement.

The UN has frequently warned that small-scale events, if left unchecked, had the potential to spiral out of control and evolve into a larger crisis.

"He appealed to the Eritrean and Ethiopian delegations to cooperate in addressing these incidents with more vigour in the future," the statement added.

Eritrea's Col Zecarias Ogbagaber told the meeting that the stability of the 25 km-wide demilitarised zone could be threatened by localised occurrences.

He noted that "urgent measures needed to be taken to prevent these incidents from undermining stability inside the [demilitarised] Temporary Security Zone". He also "drew attention to various ... incidents, including kidnappings".

Attempts to resolve the border dispute between the two Horn of Africa countries since the end of a bloody two-year war in 2000 have reached a stalemate.

Senior UN and Eritrean government officials recently warned that the current standoff was unsustainable, raising fears of renewed conflict.

Under the terms of the Algiers Peace Agreement of December 2000, which ended the conflict, both sides agreed to accept a "final and binding" decision of where the border would be after it was set by an independent boundary commission.

After initially rejecting this decision, Ethiopia in November 2004 accepted the commission's ruling "in principle", but called for dialogue on implementation in the disputed areas of the border. Eritrea, on the other hand, rejected the idea of dialogue and insisted on full implementation of the commission's ruling.

[ENDS]

This material comes to you via IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit, but May not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations or its agencies. If you re-print, copy, archive or re-post this item, please retain this credit and disclaimer. Quotations or extracts should include attribution to the original sources. All materials copyright © UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 2005