UN protests against Eritrea

AFP | Semptember 1, 2006

Unmee soldiers patrolling border areas in Eritrea (Photo: Dawit Rezene)

The UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) said that it was calling for the immediate release of the detainee, who it said had been arrested Monday while driving an official vehicle.

"In addition to protesting the arrest and detention of the staff, the mission has been engaging the Eritrean authorities for his immediate release," it said in a brief statement posted to its Website.

"A full investigation of the incident is underway," UNMEE said, adding only that the staff member had been detained while "driving an UNMEE vehicle from Asmara, Eritrea to Adigrat, Ethiopia."

The statement was UNMEE's first public comment on the matter since Eritrea Tuesday announced the arrest of an unspecified number of UNMEE personnel who it said had been caught hiding youths and property in official vehicles.

In a statement the Eritrean information ministry said that the actions of the involved UNMEE staff "constitute a grave crime" and would be prosecuted.

It gave few details of the incident but claimed that the detained UN staff had been given large cash bribes by each of the people that they were allegedly trying to smuggle and said that it was not the first time that this had happened.

UNMEE and Eritrea have long had strained relations, particularly during the past year when tensions rose between Asmara and Addis Ababa over the failure to fully implement a 2000 peace deal that ended their bloody two-year border war.

But aside from that issue, Eritrea has frequently clashed with the mission and arrested more than a dozen of its local employees, accusing them of trying to avoid compulsory national service.