The United Nations urged Ethiopia and Eritrea on Monday to take "concrete actions" to avert tensions along their common border amid concerns of a new war between the two countries.

"Nobody should be complacent in the present situation," said UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Jean-Marie Guehenno after meeting with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi.

"There is always a risk of war by miscalculation," said Guehenno, who was on a three-day visit to the Horn of Africa country to try to avert escalating border situations.

"I think both countries have stressed that they don't want to go to war. That is not quite good enough. There are concrete actions that need to be taken," he told journalists.

The UN official also welcomed Ethiopia's decision on Saturday to pull troops away from the border in compliance with a UN resolution to defuse a repeat of a 1998-2000 border war.

"We believe that there is always a risk of war in a situation like that," he said.

"We have seen in the past five years that minor incidents can escalate because of the mistrust, because of misperceptions and sometimes because of the command and control issues at the very local level," Guehenno said on the fifth anniversary of a peace deal that ended the two-year Ethio-Eritrea war in December 2000.

Under the peace deal, Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to accept the conclusions of an independent boundary commission on where the border should lie. The commission issued its findings in April 2002 and Eritrea fully accepted them.

But the process of marking out the new boundary on the ground broke down after Ethiopia objected that the flashpoint western town of Badme had been awarded to Eritrea. The border war, which killed more than 70,000 people, began when Ethiopia accused Eritrea of invading Badme.

In support of the stalled peace process, a UN peacekeeping force, which now numbers about 3,000 troops and observers, has been patrolling a buffer zone separating the two countries' militaries since July 2001.

In recent months, tensions have grown with renewed military buildup along the Ethio-Eritrea border.
 
(Xinhua News Agency December 13, 2005)