UN Security Council urges Djibouti, Eritrea to end border dispute

The UN Security Council urges Djibouti and Eritrea to resolve their border dispute peacefully.

The UN Security Council have urged Djibouti and Eritrea to resolve their border dispute peacefully after tensions flared following the withdrawal of Qatari peacekeepers from a buffer zone.

Djibouti accused Eritrea of moving its forces into the buffer zone last week, a day after Qatar, a mediator in the border dispute that turned violent in 2010, announced the troop pullout.

After hearing a UN report on Monday, the Security Council called “on the parties to resolve their border dispute peacefully in a manner consistent with international law,” said Bolivian Ambassador Sacha Llorenty, this month’s council president.

The council “would welcome the consideration of future confidence-building measures,” he told reporters after the closed-door meeting. Council members welcomed a plan by the African Union to send a fact-finding mission to the disputed border region, Llorenty added.

The meeting on the border tensions was called by Ethiopia, which fought a war with Eritrea in the late 1990s.

The Qatari withdrawal comes as the Persian Gulf emirate is locked in a bitter dispute with Saudi Arabia and its allies over alleged ties to extremists, a charge it denies.

Both Djibouti and Eritrea have good relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and have taken their side in the Persian Gulf row.