Border shooting was "isolated incident of criminality", says UNMEE

A shooting last weekend on the Ethiopia-Eritrea border was an "isolated incident of criminality", the commander of the United Nations peacekeeping force said on Thursday. Maj-Gen Robert Gordon said the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) was not prepared to point the finger for the shooting at "any party at this stage". An Eritrean militiaman is alleged to have been killed in the skirmish last weekend in an Eritrean village inside the demilitarised Temporary Security Zone (TSZ) between the two countries. "It is extremely simplistic to look at incidents like this through a prism of interstate conflict," Gordon told journalists. "We are in a part of the world where in these border areas there are many intrastate issues, there are law and order issues, and there are issues of governance," he said. The Ethiopian government has categorically denied that its troops were involved in the shooting. Gordon added that the peacekeepers had found bullet casings and bloodstains at the scene of the alleged crime, but that they had not actually seen a body yet. "We are in discussions with the Eritrean authorities, who have told us they will show us the body, which has been buried." He went on to say that some 3,000 peacekeeping troops were spread thinly over the 25-km-wide, 1,000 km-long TSZ, and described the zone as "calm and stable". In a separate development, a pilot under contract to UNMEE has been declared persona non grata by the Eritrean government and asked to leave the country. The jet pilot for the head of UNMEE, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, had been accused by the Eritrean government of spying, UNMEE officials told journalists. The UNMEE spokeswoman, Gail Bindley Taylor Sainte, said the man, who had worked for UNMEE for the last three months, had been held by Eritrean authorities near the commercial airport of Massawa on the Red Sea coast. "There was an unfortunate incident in which he lost his way in Eritrea and unfortunately it was perceived that he was somehow spying in the area," she said. "We believe that he was just lost. However, it was felt there was more to it than that and he was asked to leave the country," she said, adding that the pilot had already departed.