The United States will send a special mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea in a push to demarcate the disputed border between the two Horn of Africa neighbors and head off a possible resumption of their two-year border war, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said on Monday according to Reuters. The U.N. Security Council has agreed to put off any plans to reconfigure the U.N. peacekeeping mission there for 30 days to give the mission time to carry out its work, Bolton told reporters after briefing the council on the U.S. plans. "We made clear to the council that there were no promises, no guarantees," Bolton said. "We didn't want to overstate what we were undertaking ... but we felt that this kind of diplomatic initiative could bring movement on the underlying political dispute." U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer will head the mission, Bolton said. As part of a peace deal reached in 2000, about 3,300 U.N. peacekeepers patrol a demilitarized buffer zone along Eritrea's 620-mile (1,000-km) border with Ethiopia following their 1998-2000 border war. --More 23 50 Local Time 20 50 GMT
