The UN Security Council has strongly condemned Eritrea's lack of cooperation with the UN peacekeeping mission monitoring the border with Ethiopia and demanded that it resume providing diesel fuel and food and allow troops to move freely.
Council members said on Friday they would consider "further appropriate steps" -- which they didn't specify -- for the safety and protection of the peacekeepers.
The council met in emergency session after UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's office said the peacekeeping mission has been trapped in a dangerous situation inside Eritrea, denied enough food or fuel to keep operating for much longer.
"The government of Eritrea has created a situation in which a temporary relocation of personnel and equipment from Eritrea has been rendered inevitable," the council said in a statement read by its president, Panama's UN Ambassador Ricardo Arias.
"The Security Council strongly condemns the lack of cooperation from the government of Eritrea," the statement said. "The Security Council holds Eritrea responsible for the safety and security of the mission and its personnel. The Security Council demands that the government of Eritrea resume full cooperation."
Relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been consistently strained since Eritrea gained its independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 following a 30-year guerrilla war. The border between the countries was never officially demarcated, which led to a two-and-a-half-year war that ended in 2000.
Under the ceasefire agreement that ended the fighting, both sides agreed to allow an international boundary commission rule on the disputed border. The commission ruling in April 2002 awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea -- but Ethiopia has refused to hand over any territory.
In apparent frustration at Ethiopia's refusal to implement the ruling, and the lack of UN action to press Ethiopia to comply, Eritrea banned UN helicopter flights in its airspace in October 2005. Two months later, it banned UN night patrols and expelled Western peacekeepers -- and recently it started restricting fuel supplies.
Last Monday, Ban ordered UN peacekeepers to leave Eritrea temporarily and move to the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa -- but Eritrean authorities allowed no more than six UN vehicles to cross the increasingly militarized border, UN deputy spokeswoman Marie Okabe said.
She said there had been one incident in which UN personnel were threatened and their equipment seized. Other vehicles were stopped by Eritrean defense forces and prevented from entering Ethiopia, Okabe said.
Okabe also said an Eritrean company that was supplying food to the peacekeepers had told the UN mission that it could no longer fulfill that contract.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS