|
|
POLITICS: UN Mission Faces Strained Ethiopia-Eritrea Relations
By Sonny Inbaraj
ADDIS ABABA, Nov 7 (IPS) - The United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and
Eritrea is facing strained relations with both governments, in the midst of
spy charges and its reporting of a shooting incident, while trying to keep
the peace between the two Horn of Africa states.
It was revealed Thursday the pilot of an aircraft used by UN Secretary
General's Special Representative for Ethiopia and Eritrea, Legwaila Joseph
Legwaila, was expelled last week from Eritrea on allegations of spying. Also
the mission's reporting of a shooting incident in the Temporary Security
Zone (TSZ) over the weekend has been criticised strongly by the Ethiopian
government.
At a video-linked news conference between Addis Ababa and Eritrea's
capital
Asmara, spokesperson for the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea
(UNMEE), Gail Bindley-Taylor Sainte, confirmed that one of the pilots for UN
Special Envoy Legwaila was declared 'persona non grata' by the Eritrean
government and ordered to leave the country last week.
The pilot, a French national, apparently strayed into the Eritrean Air
Force's Massawa base.
"There was an unfortunate incident in which he (the pilot) lost his way
(while flying) in Eritrea. Unfortunately it was perceived that he was
somehow spying in the area. We believe that he was just lost," said Sainte.
On Tuesday, UNMEE issued a statement confirming a report from an Eritrean
officer that the weekend shooting took place and said it was investigating
the incident.
Eritrean militia reported that they had come under close-range small arms
fire from a group of uniformed men Saturday in Fawlina, an Eritrean village
inside the 25-kilometre wide demilitarised zone separating Ethiopian and
Eritrean troops. In the exchange of fire, one Eritrean was apparently
killed.
UNMEE has presently 4,200 blue-helmeted troops, including some military
observers deployed in the Temporary Security Zone.
"UNMEE can confirm from forensic evidence that a firing incident did take
place. The Ethiopian Ministry of Defence has categorically denied any
Ethiopian military involvement in this incident," the UN mission's
peacekeeping force commander Major-General Robert Gordon said in a
statement.
But on Wednesday, the Ethiopian Information Ministry issued a statement,
carried by the official Ethiopian News Agency, saying it "deplored the way
UNMEE in a roundabout manner" attempted to implicate Ethiopia in the
shooting incident.
"Ethiopia has not deployed a single soldier in Eritrea and has no
intention of doing so in the future. Members of the Ethiopian defence
forces, in strict observance of the order given to them are only engaged in
their routine daily activities within their territory," said the ministry
statement.
"Thus UNMEE has no ground whatsoever to implicate the Ethiopian defence
force in the incident that allegedly took place within Eritrea. It is very
unfair for UNMEE, which is well aware of all these facts, to try to
implicate Ethiopia as a suspect of the incident," added the statement.
But Gordon told reporters he did not mean to imply the involvement of
Ethiopian soldiers.
"That is a slight overreaction. There's absolutely no implication from
UNMEE and we've been at pains not to point the finger at any party because
we simply don't have the facts," he said.
Commenting on UNMEE's relations with Ethiopia and Eritrea, Sainte said
the current situation was extremely sensitive and it was inevitable that
misunderstandings happen from time to time.
"We would hope both sides respect the role UNMEE is playing in this
(peace) process. We accept that things are sensitive at this time and there
may be incidents or things that might be misunderstood or misconstrued," she
said.
"But our hope is that because we continue to talk to both sides, we would
be able to clarify whatever misunderstandings that may come in the way,"
added Sainte.
When the United Nations was first sent to Ethiopia and Eritrea, it was
envisaged that their stay would be a short one, charged with keeping both
sides apart while an independent boundary commission ruled and then built
their common border.
But with Ethiopia having rejected the commission's ruling that the
symbolic town of Badme belongs to Eritrea, the peace process is, now, what
the UN calls as "under severe stress".
Last week, the Hague-based Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission (EEBC)
said it was unable to begin border demarcation of the two countries, as
spelled out in the Algiers Agreement that ended the war, but was "ready and
willing to proceed as soon as conditions permit".
The border demarcation was originally scheduled for May, then July and
finally last month.
The Ethiopian-Eritrean war, which began in 1998, was the biggest in the
world at the time, clearly surpassing the Kosovo war in the number of
casualties, troops involved and displaced civilians. The number of dead and
wounded was estimated at 100,000 with an involvement of about half a million
troops and the displacement of about 600,000 civilians.
"If the conflict had been over a contested border neither, the Ethiopian
government nor Eritrea, would have jeopardised the well-being of their
citizens," wrote academics Tekeste Negash and Kjetil Tronvoll in their
seminal work 'Brothers at War'.
Members of the country's Tigrayan community reportedly oppose the Badme
ruling because they fear losing access to ancestral graves located in the
area. There is also said to be a school of thought in Ethiopia that opposes
giving Eritrea any territory at all; this is on the grounds that Eritrea's
1993 secession from Ethiopia already dealt the country a blow by cutting of
its access to the Red Sea.
Relations between the two countries began to deteriorate from early 1997.
And, according to Negash and Tronvoll, both began to accuse each other of
creating obstacles to the free flow of trade and investment.
In September, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, himself a Tigrayan,
called on the UN Security Council to set up an alternative body to demarcate
the contested parts of the border "in a just and legal manner so as to
ensure lasting peace in the region".
But the Security Council has rejected Ethiopia's calls for a new body. In
a one-page response, it urged Zenawi's government to implement the
controversial EEBC ruling on Badme.
"There's fear that normalising relations would be a mistake as Eritreans
would then be let to come back and regain their dominance over the business
of the Ethiopian economy and take eventual control of the country," wrote
political analyst Berhane Habte-Mariam in the 'Addis Tribune' recently.
Concerns about the fraying peace process were voiced during last month's
meeting in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, of the Intergovernmental Authority
on Development (IGAD) - a regional grouping that comprises Eritrea,
Ethiopia, Somalia, Djibouti, Kenya, Sudan and Uganda. An appeal was made at
the talks for IGAD's current Chairman, Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, to
be more involved in the process, along with African Union Chairman Joachim
Chissano - who is also President of Mozambique.
The question now is whether the United Nations can maintain peace-keeping
operations in the disputed area longer than it originally intended to.
At 250 million dollars a year, the peacekeeping mission does not come
cheap. In his September report to the Security Council, which included an
appeal for the renewal of UNMEE's mandate, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
said the world body's resources were scarce - and that peacekeepers were
also needed elsewhere in Africa.
(END/2003)
|
|
|
|
|
| |
|
|
|
|
|
|
What is RSS?
