UN caught in Horn border row

A bloody war raged for years over the border

By the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt

Ethiopia has accused the United Nations peacekeeping force in the region of violating its agreement with the government.

The official spokesman confirmed that Ethiopia had closed its border with Eritrea to all UN personnel on Saturday and said the border would stay closed until the issue had been sorted out.

Until just a few days ago, international attempts to restore peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea had been going rather well.

The war began around Badme

An independent boundary commission had given its ruling on the disputed border, and both sides had accepted it.

Aerial photography of the border areas had been completed in preparation for detailed mapping and marking of the boundary.

But both sides are still smarting from not getting everything they wanted and nervous about one particular area - around the village of Badme.

This was where the border war began and the village itself did not appear on the boundary commission's maps.

Wrong approach

Responding to press interest, the UN mission to the region took a group of journalists down to Badme.

The problem was not what they reported - gratifyingly for the Ethiopian Government, they reported that the people living in the village considered themselves Ethiopian, used Ethiopian currency and generally thought they were living in Ethiopia.

The problem was with how they got there - they had set out from Asmara and approached Badme from the Eritrean side.

The Ethiopian Government spokesman has now confirmed that this was the incident that caused the row - she interpreted it as bringing unauthorised people across the border from Eritrea into Ethiopian territory and said it was a gross and blatant violation of the agreement between Ethiopia and the United Nations.

Ethiopia is demanding an apology - which puts the UN in a delicate position.

To apologise would be to concede that it had brought the journalists into Ethiopian territory without authorisation and that would mean accepting that Badme village is on the Ethiopian side of the border.