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ADDIS ABABA (AFP) - The first 40 United Nations ceasefire monitors on Friday began to deploy simultaneously on either side of border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, the U.N. here announced.
The development comes ahead of the deployment of more than 4,000 U.N. peacekeepers under a peace agreement signed in June to end a two-year border war between the Horn of Africa neighbors. "This is the real beginning, the moment when we actually establish the blue berets' presence on the front," U.N. liaison officer Colonel Frederick Hoogeland said in a statement issued by the United Nations Mission for Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE). "Over the next two days, eight teams totaling 40 observers will be deployed, four [teams] from Asmara and four from Addis Ababa, to cover four sites on each side of the border," the statement said. They are the first of 100 military observers whom the U.N. Security Council in July mandated to be sent to the Horn of Africa border. On Friday morning, a U.N. plane carrying 15 of the observers - from Ghana, Zambia, Poland, Finland and Tanzania - left for the northern Ethiopian town of Mekele. According to Canadian Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Ryder-Burbidge, they were to be deployed in Inda Selassie, Adigrat and Menda, which all lie close to or on the Eritrean border. Ryder-Burbidge said five more observers were due to travel 750 kilometers (450 miles) by road from Addis Ababa to Menda. "The objective of this mission is to establish contacts with local military and civil authorities and getting information to assist the deployment of U.N. troops," said the Canadian officer. On September 15th, the Security Council authorized the deployment of 4,200 U.N. peacekeepers, including 220 military observers, for a period of six months. Some 56 military observers recently arrived in Asmara and Addis Ababa and a further 44 are expected before the end of October. No date has yet been set for the full-scale deployment of the peacekeepers, but it is not expected to take place before November. Under the terms of the Algiers accord, which followed a successful offensive into southern Eritrea by Ethiopian forces, the peacekeepers will only deploy on Eritrean soil, in a 25-kilometer (15.5 mile) wide corridor along the border. Hostilities between the Horn of Africa neighbors first erupted in May 1998 over a border dispute. |
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