(16 Dec 2005) SHOTLIST
1. UN plane lands on runway
2. UN western and non-western staff get off plane
3. SOUNDBITE: (English) UN official, no name given:
"(Q Is that good or bad for the peace?) For the peace? I don't know."
4. UN planes on tarmac
STORYLINE
The United Nations has reluctantly withdrawn peacekeeping staff from Eritrea, saying it faced an unprecedented crisis in its monitoring of the uneasy peace between Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Amid fears of a new Horn of Africa war, the UN Security Council on Wednesday bowed to Eritrean demands that all Americans, Canadians and Europeans - about 180 of a force of about 3,300 - leave the UN's Eritrea-Ethiopia peacekeeping mission.
But the Council and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan made it clear that the decision to redeploy the affected military observers and civilian staff to the Ethiopian capital was just a first step.
Both promised a speedy review of the entire UN peacekeeping operation, with one option almost certain to be to end it and send all the nearly 3,300 civilian and military staff home.
The first 87 affected by the expulsion order arrived in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa from Asmara on three flights on Thursday.
The United Nations established the mission after a two and a-half year border war between the Horn of Africa neighbours.
A December 2000 peace agreement provided for an independent commission to rule on the position of the disputed 1,000-kilometre (621-mile) border, while UN troops patrolled a 24-kilometre(15-mile) buffer zone between the two countries.
Ethiopia has refused to implement the international commission's April 2002 ruling, which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea.
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