Eritrea rejected a United Nations accusation that its recent movement of troops near the border with Ethiopia represented a "major breach" of a cease-fire agreement between the two countries, the country's U.N. ambassador said in a letter released Friday.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Eritrea last week to immediately withdraw 1,500 troops and 14 tanks from a buffer zone established on the border in 2000 after Eritrea fought a 2 1/2-year war with Ethiopia.

Eritrea's U.N. Ambassador Araya Desta said in his letter to the U.N. Security Council president that the troop movement did not constitute either an "incursion" or a "major breach." He said the troops were there to help improve Eritrea's infrastructure.

"For over four years, Eritrea refrained from engaging in any meaningful developmental work in its own territories bordering Ethiopia to allow maximum time and opportunity for the Security Council to use its leverage over Ethiopia's intransigence," said the letter, dated Monday.

U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Friday the world body's ability to monitor the buffer zone has been hampered by Eritrea's refusal to allow U.N. helicopters in its airspace and its limitations on the 3,800-member U.N. peacekeeping force on the ground.

He reiterated Annan's call for the troops to be removed from the buffer zone.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has called the Eritrean troop movement a violation of the cease-fire, but said his country would not make similar moves.

Relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been consistently strained since Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993 following a 30-year guerrilla war. Eritrea's recent action raised the threat of renewed war between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbors.

Thousands of Ethiopian and Eritrean troops are also in Somalia backing opposing sides in the struggle for control of that country, according to a U.N. briefing paper obtained by The Associated Press on Friday. The top U.S. diplomat to Africa, Jendayi Frazer, last week accused Eritrea of using Somalia to open a second front against Ethiopia.

On Thursday, U.N. officials said that a U.N. peacekeeper shot and killed an Eritrean civilian after he illegally entered a U.N. border post with a friend and tried to attack a U.N. guard last weekend in an Eritrean border town.

It was the first time an Eritrean civilian has been killed by U.N. peacekeepers since they were deployed to the region in early 2001, officials said.

Eritrea's Information Minister Ali Abdu condemned the shooting and demanded the peacekeeper be held responsible.

"The U.N.'s mission is to keep peace not to kill people," he told the AP by telephone from the capital, Asmara.

The U.N. mission in Eritrea said it regretted the incident and would cooperate in an investigation. Officials declined to comment on whether the Eritreans were armed.

___

Associated Press writers Les Neuhaus in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and Chris Tomlinson in Nairobi, Kenya, contributed to this report.

  Add comment

Name:
E-Mail:
Comment:
Enter code:

  Comments