The United Nations accused Eritrea on Monday of moving 1,500 troops and 14 tanks into a buffer zone established after a 2 1/2-year border war with Ethiopia, «a major breach» of a ceasefire agreement reached in 2000, according to AP. U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan urged the Eritrean government to withdraw its troops from the buffer zone immediately, and to cooperate with the United Nations in restoring the ceasefire arrangements, U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said. Relations between Eritrea and Ethiopia have been consistently strained since Eritrea gained its independence from the Addis Ababa government in 1993 following a 30-year guerrilla war. Eritrea's action raised the threat of renewed war between the feuding Horn of Africa neighbors. A 3,800-strong U.N. peacekeeping force has been monitoring a 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) buffer zone between Eritrea and Ethiopia under a December 2000 peace agreement reached in the Algerian capital, Algiers, that ended the border war.
