Eritrea assails UN over charges of Darfur rebel support

February 8, 2006

ASMARA -- Eritrea on Wednesday angrily denied charges by a UN panel that it is providing weapons and military support to rebel groups in Sudan's troubled western Darfur region in violation of an arms embargo.

Information minister Ali Abdu said that the panel's conclusion that Eritrea is helping the two Darfur rebel groups was false, accusing the United Nations of inept ineffectiveness and UN chief Kofi Annan of being corrupt. "The report is totally groundless," he said. "Instead of pointing futile fingers at others, the UN should question itself, its role in keeping peace and stability in different regions.

"The UN is inept, it needs [reform] more than any time in its history," Ali Abdu said. "It is an ineffective institution with a corrupt secretary general.

" In a report issued this week, the panel of experts looking at the 2004 arms embargo on non-state actors in Darfur said that the rebel Sudan Liberation Army (SLA) and Justice and Equality Movement (JEM) were getting illegal support from Eritrea, as well as from Chad, Libya and unknown other sources.

"The panel judges that the government of Eritrea has provided, and probably continues to provide arms, logistical support, military training and political support to both JEM and the SLA," it said.

"Training of JEM and SLA has reportedly occurred at a number of camps in Eritrea on the Eritrea-Sudan border," the report said.

Ali Abdu said that the accusations were baseless, but allowed that Eritrea does give political and moral support to various Sudanese factions.

Asmara has long had a fractious relationship with the United Nations, which it accuses of failing to force archrival neighbor Ethiopia to accept a binding border demarcation that was part of the deal that ended their 1998-2000 war.

Those ties have deteriorated significantly in recent months after Eritrea imposed restrictions on UN peacekeepers monitoring the border with Ethiopia and expelled North American and European members of the mission from its territory.

The UN Security Council has threatened to slap sanctions on Asmara unless the restrictions are rescinded but Eritrea has thus far ignored the demand.