The Egyptian foreign ministry summoned the Eritrean Ambassador to Egypt to protest the detention of the Egyptian ship Abu Zekeriya and it crew, according to news sources.

The ship and its crew were detained by the Eritrean navy nine months ago.

AlMasry AlYoum website quoted Ambassador Ahmed AlQueisni, the deputy to Egypt's foreign minister as saying, “we have indicated to the [Eritrean] Ambassador, in a firm manner, the fact that the delegates from the Egyptian mission were not able to visit the detained crew since their detention nine-months ago; [this] is against diplomatic norms and is not in line with the cordial relations that exist between Asmara and Cairo”.

Ambassador AlQueisni added, “we delivered to the Ambassador an official memo to this effect to present it to the concerned authorities in his country and he promised a solution for the problem and the presenting of the crew for trial in a few days time.”

Egyptians are not the only ones complaining. On January 30, 2008, Saba, the official website of Yemen, reported that Yemen had summoned Mr. Musa Sheiekedin, the Eritrean ambassador to Yemen, to complain about the year-long arrest of Yemeni fishermen who were either not tried at all or tried in a military court.  

Background

Eritrea has been detaining Egyptian and Yemeni crew and ships that sail in the Red Sea region for fishing since its independence in 1991.

Eritrea’s grievance is due to the commercial fishers use of dynamite which is used to optimize yield but, in the process, destroys coral reefs and other fish species that the fishermen are not interested in.

The Red Sea basin across Eritrea is resources-rich because it was relatively protected from large-scale industrial exploitation. The abundance of rare fish attracts the Egyptian fishermen to Eritrean waters of the Red Sea where a one-day catch equals one-week catch in the Egyptian waters.

In both cases, the Eritrean regime has a legitimate grievance but, as appears its custom, it is not using effective diplomacy or conventional legal venues to settle them.