With tensions rising between Niger and Burkina Faso as they accuse each other's security forces of crossing the border to rob and harass villagers, local officials in the area met recently to renew a call for a buffer zone. "The situation is very difficult as the exact location of the border has not been agreed on," the governor of the Sahel Region of Burkina Faso, Bila Dipama, told IRIN on Thursday (4 January 2007), a week after the meeting in Burkina Faso's eastern town of Fada.