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Nearly 65,000 Ethiopian Troops Demobilized: Official
Ethiopia has demobilized nearly 65,000 soldiers who were involved in a two-year-old border conflict with Eritrea since May 1998, a senior official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said.
The Daily Monitor Wednesday quoted Yemane Kidane, chief of staff in the ministry, as reporting that the first demobilized servicemen started arriving in their respective regions on December 4, 2000, and that the process is going on.
It was reported that both Ethiopia and Eritrea mobilized more than 300,000 soldiers at the height of the border war.
While the Ethiopian demobilization is under process, the deployment of the United Nations peacekeeping forces along the Ethio-Eritrean border is facing delay because Eritrea rejected to the UN deployment 25 kilometers deep inside its territory, according to local UN officials.
Currently, some 1800 peacekeeping soldiers from Canada, Holland, Denmark and Italy have been deployed along the 1,000-kilometer long Ethio-Eritrean border. A total of 4,200 UN mission are expected to be deployed in the buffer zone.
The UN peacekeepers are mandated to monitor the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops and Eritrea's military redeployment until the border is demarcated.
So far, there is no timetable for the new demarcation of the Ethio-Eritrean border yet.
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