NAIROBI: Eritrea on Wednesday ordered all Westerners serving in the United Nations peacekeeping mission there to leave the country within 10 days, raising tension along the country's contested border with Ethiopia.
The move came without explanation in a government notice delivered to the leadership of the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea, which has about 3,800 peacekeepers and support staff, most of them from the developing world, in the two countries.
The government's order said only that it represented a "decision of the Eritrean government concerning some members of the mission."
It spelled out that Americans, Canadians, Europeans and Russians were affected by the decision and would have 10 days to leave the country.
The action stemmed from growing frustration in Asmara, the Eritrean capital, that world's powers were failing to pressure Eritrea's rival, Ethiopia, to accept a binding decision drawing the border between the two countries.
A fierce, two-year border war between Eritrea and Ethiopia claimed as many as 100,000 lives. It ended in 2000 with an agreement by both governments to allow international mediators to decide the border, particularly the location of the disputed town of Badme, where the fighting began.
In 2002, the border commission gave Badme to Eritrea, a decision that Ethiopia has refused to accept.
With tensions rising anew along the border, the Security Council last month threatened both countries with economic and diplomatic sanctions should they return to war. Eritrea denounced the resolution as a "recipe for new conflict" and criticized Security Council members for not threatening Ethiopia with sanctions if it failed to agree to the new border.
Diplomats estimated that the order would affect about 70 civilians and 90 military observers. Most of the peacekeeping troops come from India, Jordan and Kenya and would not be forced to leave.
But the eviction of Western troops comes on top of an order by the Eritrean government in October banning UN helicopter flights in Eritrean territory. That move has severely hampered peacekeepers' work and prompted commanders to withdraw many troops from the border area.
Eritrea, a tiny Horn of Africa state that was created in 1991, has clashed repeatedly with the international community in recent years as criticism has grown of the government's autocratic ways. Eritrea expelled the United States Agency for International Development earlier in the year, without explanation. It has also jailed several nationals who work at the U.S. Embassy in Asmara, suggesting that they were acting as spies.
