Top US envoy meets government officials

A top US diplomat for African affairs has arrived in Ethiopia on a three-day mission to help breathe new life into a stalled peace process with Eritrea, the US embassy said on Tuesday. Donald Yamamoto, the deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs, met Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on Monday. He will also discuss post-election disturbances in Ethiopia with members of his administration, an official said. He will also meet some leaders of opposition parties, according to Beyene Petros, chairman of the opposition United Ethiopian Democratic Forces "Yamamoto is in Addis Ababa for discussions with the government on the border situation and on the current internal political situation," said Anthony Fisher, US embassy public affairs counsel. It is the envoy’s second visit to the Horn of Africa nation in a little more than a month and comes amid widespread post-election disturbances - in which at least 88 people have been killed and opposition leaders jailed - and rising border tensions with neighbouring Eritrea. The UN has warned that both Eritrea and Ethiopia risk a renewed war if the international community does nothing to ease current tensions. A UN peacekeeping mission along the 1,000 km border of both countries is monitoring their tentative stalemate. "Stability in the Horn is a priority for the US Government in the global war on terrorism," Yamamoto said in May during his testimony before the Africa subcommittee of Congress. The talks follow the UN mission’s announcement that large troop movements are continuing on both sides of the border. The two countries have become increasingly suspicious of one another since Eritrea restricted peacekeeping operations on the buffer zone. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but the border between the two countries was never formally demarcated. A bloody two-year border conflict ended in 2000. A peace agreement provided for an independent commission to rule on the boundary. Ethiopia, however, refused to accept the panel's 2002 decision in its entirety. The UN mission estimated that a recent ban imposed by Eritrea on helicopter flights has cut their monitoring capacity by more than half. Almost all night patrols have now been curtailed. Ethiopia has moved two divisions - estimated at around 12,000 troops - into the border region in the last month and stationed them some 40 km from the buffer zone, the UN said recently. Since December, Ethiopia has deployed up to seven army divisions as close as 24 km from the buffer zone and ignored UN Security Council requests to withdraw them. The government insists it is a purely defensive measure. Diplomats believe some 380,000 troops are entrenched along the border. Thousands of armed militia are also available to both sides. Eritrea has claimed its troop movements are for harvesting.