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ERITREA (News Agencies)-Eritrean and Ethiopian troops are exchanging heavy artillery, while the United Nations Security Council is considering a proposal by the United States to impose an arms embargo on the warring countries, which have been engaged in heavy combat along their disputed border since Friday morning. Eritrea says that fighting is continuing on the western front - but reports from the region confirm that the Ethiopian forces have pushed the front line back into Eritrea. Ethiopia says it is now battling for the control of strategic towns after making significant territorial gains, and taking several hundred prisoners of war. "Fighting continued intensely," said Eritrean spokesperson, Yemane Ghebremeskel, adding that Eritrean forces had shot down a Russian-made Su-27 combat jet and a Mi-24 helicopter gunship, and destroyed seven Ethiopian tanks. But Ethiopian government sources denied the jet had been shot down. There are no independent observers allowed near the front lines to assess the claims of either side. But in their capitals, officials pointed to the continued ferocity of the fighting as evidence that the other side has overstated the damage. In New York, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan declined to predict the outcome of a Security Council vote. "I would urge the two leaders and the peoples in Eritrea and Ethiopia, for the sake of their people, for the sake of the region, to heed the call for peace," he said. In May 1998, Eritrea, which five years earlier had been a province of Ethiopia, abruptly dispatched an armored division to occupy a scrubby patch of territory claimed by both nations. There have been persistent diplomatic efforts to resolve the conflict peaceably, but Ethiopia has consistently refused to endorse a cease-fire until Eritrea vacates the terrain. Pressure has increased on Ethiopia in the last two months, as international aid workers condemned the government for military spending while 8 million people in the country are threatened by famine. More than 100,000 Ethiopians protested in the streets of the capital, bridling at a threat of U.N. sanctions for prosecuting a border war they call a righteous defense of national sovereignty. The U.N. Security Council gave both countries 72 hours to halt the fighting that Ethiopia renewed last week after a yearlong lull, and today the U.S. offered a separate draft resolution calling for a long-term arms embargo on the warring parties. A vote on sanctions of any sort is not expected soon. The deadline passed with no sign that either side intends to back down in a war that has killed more people than any other conflict in the world in the two years since it broke out. |
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