ASMARA The president of Eritrea, Isaias Afeworki criticized the United Nations and foreign aid agencies who did a mediocre job, at a joint press conference with UN chief Kofi Annan here on Sunday night. We want a different United Nations, one which would not repeat past mistakes and would be relevant for Africa, Afeworki said. We are very bitter, he said, referring to the United Nations policy in Rwanda and Somalia where the UN has been accused of not doing enough to prevent bloodshed.

Afeworki said his remarks were not directly personally at Annan but to the United Nations as such. He said it was clear that the United Nations could not solve our problems and it was up to Africans to do so by ourselves. Afeworki said he had told the mission of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) to leave Ertirea because he said the UNHCR was not effective in promoting the repatriation of refugees from Sudan. Annan said a high-powered HCR team had arrived on Sunday in Asmara to see how it could resume its activities there.

Afeworki said Eritrea was not asking Non-Governmental Organizastions (NGOs) and agencies to come to Eritrea. He said Eritreans were trying to do things on our own. He said Eritrea had no need of NGO workers who did a mediocre job while running luxury cars and useless offices. In addition to problems arising from UN operations in Eritrea, talks between Annan and Afeworki also focussed on the conflicts in neighboring Sudan, Somalia and the Great Lakes region of Africa. UN sources said Eritrea wanted the United Nations to demonstrate stronger support for the Inter-Governmental Authority for Development, particularly for IGAD's mediation efforts in Somalia. Annan left Asmara late on Sunday for Djibouti where he was to take a flight to Paris. Eritrea was the last leg of an eight-country African tour which took him to Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Tanzania, Burundi, Rwanda, Uganda and Eritrea after a brief unscheduled stopover in Sudan. (AFP)