By Louis Charbonneau
UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - A standoff between Eritrea andthe United Nations escalated on Friday as a U.N. spokeswomansaid Eritrea cut off food supplies to U.N. troops on its borderand stopped them from withdrawing to Ethiopia.
Spokeswoman Marie Okabe said only about half-a-dozen U.N.vehicles had been allowed to cross into Ethiopia as part of apullout forced by an earlier shut-off of fuel supplies byEritrea, which no longer wants the peacekeepers.
U.N. personnel had been threatened at gunpoint and theEritrean company providing food to the peacekeepers had said itcould no longer do so, Okabe said.
"Not more than six vehicles have been allowed by theEritreans to cross into Ethiopia," she said, adding thatpeacekeepers trapped on the disputed Eritrean-Ethiopian borderhad only had a few days of food rations left.
At an emergency session, the Security Council condemnedEritrea's "lack of cooperation," held it responsible for themission's safety, demanded it end all restrictions and warnedof unspecified "further appropriate steps" if it did not.
"The situation of UNMEE is becoming very, very delicate,"Panama's ambassador, Ricardo Alberto Arias, current presidentof the council, told reporters. Other diplomats calledEritrea's action unprecedented in U.N. peacekeeping history.
Eritrea's Foreign Ministry dismissed the charges andaccused U.N. peacekeeping officials and Secretary-General BanKi-moon's office of making "unwarranted accusations" and"distorting the reality" of the U.N. peacekeeping mission.
Insinuations that UNMEE troops in Eritrea were in dangerwere "unfounded," the ministry said in the statement sent tothe 15-nation Security Council.
U.N. troops on the border between the two Horn of Africafoes have been struggling for months to deal with the fuelblockade and recently were ordered to relocate to Ethiopia.
The 1,700-strong U.N. mission started work in 2000, at theend of a two-year war between the two countries that killed anestimated 70,000 people. They have been stationed in a15.5-mile (25-km) buffer zone inside Eritrea.
The two countries insist they will not start another war,but both have moved tens of thousands of troops to the borderbecause of the dispute over their 620-mile (1,000 km) frontier.U.N. officials have said their peacekeepers were reluctant toleave because they feared it could spark a new conflict.
BORDER DISPUTE
Okabe said formal protests would be delivered to Eritrea"at the highest level." Countries contributing to the U.N.force held an emergency meeting on Friday evening.
Eritrea shut off fuel supplies to UNMEE in December afteran independent border commission marked the boundary by mapcoordinates, a ruling Eritrea accepted but Ethiopia rejected.
Asmara says the commission's ruling, which went in itsfavour, ended the border dispute and the United Nations shouldnow be focusing on ending Ethiopia's "occupation" of itsterritory. It has ignored U.N. calls to lift the fuel blockade.
But diplomats said Arias had told the council Eritrea'sU.N. ambassador had told him there was a general fuel shortagein the country and he was "ready to solve all problems linkedto this emergency situation".
Advance units of the force began moving by road todesignated relocation sites on the Ethiopian side of the borderon Monday while the main body began moving on Thursday.
Diplomats could not say what "further steps" the councilmight take. "We haven't discussed any of the particular steps,"one said. "We hope this message will be enough."
The council renewed UNMEE's mandate for six months onJanuary 30 despite a proposal by Ban for just one month becauseof the force's difficulties. Diplomats said the council felt ashort extension would mean submitting to "blackmail" byEritrea.
(Additional reporting by Patrick Worsnip at the UnitedNations and Daniel Wallis in Nairobi)
(Editing by Peter Cooney)
