ETHIOPIA: Red Cross visits new Eritrean POWs

The International Committee of the Red Cross has visited some 300 Eritrean prisoners of war - captured since hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea resumed in February - at a transit camp in Ethiopia, a press release from the ICRC stated on Friday. The ICRC team, which included a health delegate, "registered the prisoners and interviewed them in private, in accordance with the Geneva Convention", between 17 and 19 April. The ICRC in Geneva declined to comment on the camp's location or conditions when contacted by IRIN on Friday, saying that both sides in the conflict "use everything we say in one way or another for their own purposes". In addition to the new prisoners, the Red Cross has continued to visit POWs and interned Eritrean civilians at Bilate camp to verify that their living conditions comply with the rules of international humanitarian law, Friday's statement said. "These prisoners have already been registered by ICRC, and we have been visiting very regularly", a Red Cross spokesman in Geneva added. In Eritrea, the ICRC is pursuing its efforts to gain access, as required by the Geneva Convention, to Ethiopian prisoners of war. "Our representatives in Asmara are negotiating with the government but, at the moment, there is still no access", the Red Cross spokesman told IRIN.