From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Thu Oct 29 2009 - 08:24:18 EST
Eritrea dismisses new border violence accusation
Thu Oct 29, 2009 12:19pm GMT
* Eritrea denies being a destabilising influence
* Hostile neighbours overlook vital shipping lanes
By Jeremy Clarke
ASMARA, Oct 29 (Reuters) - Eritrea said on Thursday it would not be drawn
into another war of words after neighbouring Djibouti became the latest
nation to accuse the Red Sea state of supporting rebels and spreading chaos
in the region.
Djibouti said last week Eritrea was arming and training militias to carry
out sabotage on its territory and was backing Somali rebels with suspected
ties to al Qaeda.
Eritrea has repeatedly denied the accusations.
"We do not wish to be involved in this childish public acrimony," Eritrea's
Information Minister Ali Abdu told Reuters in the capital Asmara. "We are
not ready to be engaged in infantile (arguments with Djibouti)."
Relations between the two nations -- overlooking a vital shipping lane
linking Europe to Asia -- remain hostile.
The neighbours clashed in June last year and a dozen Djiboutian soldiers
were killed after Djibouti accused Eritrea of moving troops across its
border, something Asmara denies.
Djibouti, a former French colony which separates Eritrea from Somalia, hosts
France's largest military base in Africa and a major U.S. base. Its port is
used by foreign navies patrolling busy shipping lanes off the coast of
Somalia to fight piracy.
The tiny nation is also the main route to the sea for Ethiopia -- Eritrea's
arch enemy and Washington's chief regional ally -- since it lost the ports
of Assab and Masawa when Eritrea won its independence in the early 1990s.
The U.N. Security Council called on Eritrea in January to acknowledge its
border dispute with Djibouti and participate in diplomatic efforts to
resolve it.
Asmara accuses Security Council members of ignoring what it called breaches
of international law by Ethiopia, with which it fought a 1998-2000 border
war that killed 70,000 people.
Critics including the U.N. Security Council, the African Union and the
United States have all said that Eritrea has isolated itself, is a danger to
security in the Horn of Africa and a destabilising force in both Ethiopia
and Somalia.
But Asmara says it has long been the victim of pro-Ethiopian prejudice and
unfair meddling by the international community, particularly in its border
dispute with Addis Ababa. (Editing by Daniel Wallis and Erik Kirschbaum)
C Thomson Reuters 2009 All rights reserved
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