Interview with outgoing UNMEE commander Maj Gen Patrick Cammaert

Major General Partick Cammaert is the outgoing force commander of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE). During his two years in charge, he has come under fire from the Ethiopian authorities who accused him of "bias". Here, in excerpts from his last interview with journalists in Asmara and Addis Ababa on Friday, he rejects Ethiopia's accusations, and speaks of his two years as head of UNMEE. QUESTION: Has UNMEE been successful? ANSWER: I would say yes. UNMEE has been very successful. We have been entirely successful in our core mandate. The core mandate is to monitor the ceasefire, redeploy the armed forces, establish the Temporary Security Zone (TSZ), observe the security commitment by the parties, [and] the chairmanship of the MCC [Military Coordination Commission] meetings which have been very successful - 13 meetings. We coordinated the mine action, humanitarian human rights activities until the determination of the common border. That is quite successful I would say. We see light at the end of the tunnel and I would have wished to do the whole thing in six months but that really is not possible. Q: What do you think, now you are leaving, of Ethiopia’s campaign to get you out of a job? A: I am not here today to re-hash it and I will not answer any more questions on that subject. The Ethiopian government made their point with the Secretary General. I responded to those accusations, the Secretary General responded to Isayas [Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki] and Meles [Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi] and that is the end of the case. Q: How effective do you think your mission has been over the past six or seven months considering that you have not been able to visit half of the mission area? A: Speaking about effectiveness, as you know my title is force commander and I have continued for the full two years in full operational control of the military component. And in terms of UNMEE operations the Temporary Security Zone is entirely on Eritrean controlled territory. As far as meetings with military leaders are concerned, I should point out that this is a round the clock peacekeeping mission and not a two-man embassy... Q: In the last six month months the Ethiopian government closed the border for ten days, demanded you leave the country and there are also restrictions still in place which UNMEE says are in violation of the Status of Forces Agreement. Can you tell me how that is a success? A: In every mission where you have two parties, one of the parties are resenting what you have done or what the other party has done. And I am sure that you will find, if you consult in the future the public archives, that the mission and myself have been accused at one point or the other of bias by both parties and that is unavoidable in the business. We knew when we started this operation that we would be accused by both parties but it does not matter as long as you can keep on going, take more time. Of course we had things that were not going as smoothly as we had hoped for, because if that was the case the United Nations was not necessary in the two countries. Q: Do you feel you are leaving your job half done because [border] demarcation has yet to begin? A: It would have been marvellous if we could have done this job in six months. It would have saved the United Nations a lot of money. But that is not the reality. The reality of the day is that this is a process that takes time. And since my time was two years and another force commander has to take over and hopefully - and I have all the confidence in that - he can finish the mission when demarcation finishes. Q: Is there anything you would have differently on a professional basis? A: There are two points to this. I would have liked to have more money from the United Nations in the quick impact project fund, and a faster procedure to lay our hands on the money so we could have done even more than what we have done at the moment. And second it would have been nice if normalisation and reconciliation would have taken place in my period of office. However the first point, we haven’t got the huge amount of money I would have liked to see and second I have already been recently satisfied that we have laid the ground and made the environment ready for reconciliation and normalisation. Q: Have you succeeded in confidence building when, currently, the level of mistrust is very high? A: The answer is very short - yes. Of course you can do more but if we have achieved a lot of things, I say yes we have. It would be very nice to achieve more, of course, more confidence building matters, but that takes time people should realise that and you don’t do that overnight.