(12 May 2000) English/Nat
XFA
The U-S ambassador to the United Nations, Richard Holbrooke, said on Friday there was little hope of stopping a devastating war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.
He came to Munich fresh from an African peace mission to break the news that tens of thousands of people could be killed within days if full-scale conflict breaks out as it did last year.
Holbrooke and six other Security Council representatives had urged leaders of the two countries not to return to a "senseless" war.
But both Horn of Africa nations said on Friday that fighting had broken out along their border.
Holbrooke visited Munich at the end of gruelling trip to Africa.
He and six other Security Council members had jetted to seven African countries in six days.
The trip was intended to secure a 5,500-member U-N observer force to monitor a shaky ceasefire in Congo, but Ethiopia and Eritrea were added to the itinerary at the last minute to try to prevent a resumption of fighting there.
Holbrooke said it appeared that mission had failed.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Because the Security Council special mission to the Congo was asked as an emergency measure to divert to the Horn of Africa in a last ditch effort to prevent a war which now appears imminent. This crisis and there is no other word for it, on the Horn of Africa, was a direct result of the breakdown of the talks in Algiers on May 5th and the Ethiopians have been massing troops on the border and we went to Addis Ababa and Asmara in an effort to persuade them not to proceed with the war."
SUPER CAPTION: Richard Holbrooke, US envoy
Ethiopia and Eritrea began fighting over their 1,000-kilometre (620-mile) border two years ago.
Holbrooke said famine threatens 16 (m) million people in southern Ethiopia because the government is using all resources for its soldiers.
He called on the U-N Security Council to put pressure on Ethiopia and Eritrea for peace talks by passing a resolution condemning their conflict.
However, he said there was still hope of peace talks resuming soon.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Some people thought the war was inevitable whatever we did, others thought maybe we could help, maybe we could prevent it or delay it. It's a very critical seasonal factor, it's the end of the dry season. This is a tank war, this is a very conventional war, not like Sierra Leone or Congo or Bosnia. This is more like an Iraq or Kuwait and once it starts raining those tanks don't move very well. So with the best intelligence estimates we have is the war is imminent."
SUPER CAPTION: Richard Holbrooke, US envoy
Holbrooke also commented on the situation in Sierra Leone.
He said it was imperative that the U-N peacekeeping mission succeed, and be seen to succeed.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Sierra Leone should not be a metaphor for peacekeeping. There are plenty of peacekeeping successes. But I have said repeatedly that Rwanda, Somalia and Bosnia were failures and we can't afford another one of these failures. So the challenge to world peacekeeping is before us, not just with Sierra Leone, but with Congo and the others."
SUPER CAPTION: Richard Holbrooke, U-S envoy
Richard Holbrooke, the U-S ambassador to the United Nations, was in Munich to receive an award from the American Chamber of Commerce in Germany.
He was stopping off on his way back to New York following the Africa tour.
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