Eritrea Faces UN Sanctions for Violation of Arms Embargoes

By Eunice Kilonzo

Asmara---Eritrea’s president, Issaias Afeworki has asked for a personal hearing before the United Nations (UN) Security Council in a bid to head off new sanctions over alleged support for Somalia’s Islamist rebels. He seeks to oppose a draft resolution currently in the final pipes proposing tougher sanctions against his regime for reported multiple violations of previously put arms embargoes. The proposed resolution comes in response to the findings of the latest report of the Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea, which concluded that Eritrea had committed numerous violations of the existing sanctions.

According to the report, Eritrea had continued to provide training, financial and logistical support to armed opposition groups throughout the region, in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Somalia (including the Islamist rebel group Al Shabaab) and Sudan. If granted, the meeting would be a return visit for President Issaias to the UN headquarters in New York City in less than two months.

This comes at a time when Kenya is accusing Eritrea of arming Somali Islamist rebels, al Shabaab and Kenya had warned to take extreme options in response. Kenya’s threat comes after three plane-loads of weapons were delivered last week to al Qaeda-linked Al-Shabaab militants who Kenyan forces are currently fighting in the south of Somalia. Afeworki has however denied Kenya’s accusations that his country arms al Shabaab rebels in Somalia and that it was involved in a plot, outlined in a UN sanctions committee report, to bomb the summit in the Ethiopian capital in January. UN Security Council members Nigeria and Gabon tabled the resolution calling for sanctions on Eritrea’s mining industry and remissions from abroad. However there are concerns that the action against mining-the core of Eritrea’s tiny, crippled economy-would only harm the country’s five million people.

The Security Council has not yet formally replied to the president. No date has yet been set for a meeting on Eritrea, but the six-nation Inter-Governmental Authority on Development, an East African regional bloc, is stepping up pressure for a decision, diplomats said.

Eritrea’s Foreign Minister Osman Saleh said in a letter to the Security Council last week that giving Ethiopia and “other powers that harbour belligerent intentions” the right to inspect any cargo heading for Eritrea “is fraught with dangerous security implications.”

He went on to slam the travel ban against officials as a bid to “reinforce the image of a ‘pariah state’ that Eritrea’s enemies have been peddling.”

Unveiled earlier this week, the calendar of the Security Council for November includes a consultation on the resolution that would impose additional sanctions on Eritrea.

The zero draft of the resolution has first proposed a ban of foreign companies from investing in Eritrea’s growing mining sector and a cut of transfers of their Diaspora tax- two percent of their annual income that Eritreans living abroad pay to the Eritrean government through their embassies overseas.

According to the Provisional Programme of Work of the Security Council – discussion and adoption of additional sanctions on Eritrea is scheduled for November 16. In December 2009, the Security Council imposed an arms embargo, travel restrictions and asset freezes on Eritrean leaders for their alleged support to Shabaab in the civil war against Somalia’s Western-backed transitional government.