A letter from President Isaias Afewerki, circulated at UN headquarters on Monday, curtly rejected Annan's request in somewhat cryptic language.
"Allow me to underline that you cannot claim the legal, political, moral or humanitarian high ground on matters of law, the rule of law and humanitarian issues," Afewerki wrote. "I have to state with much regret that your good self, and the Security Council, has forfeited your relevance on the very issues raised in a rather habitual manner, in your letter," he wrote in the letter dated last Thursday.
Annan, in a letter dated October 17 but made public only last Friday, said the ban severely inhibited the UN mission, known as UNMEE, from carrying out its mandate to monitor a buffer zone along the frontier where Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-year border war.