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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs

ERITREA-ETHIOPIA: Addis Ababa again attacks border commission

ADDIS ABABA, 20 October 2003 (IRIN) - Ethiopia has again attacked the independent boundary commission set up to rule on the contested 1,000 km border with Eritrea.

In a statement released over the weekend, the foreign ministry accused the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) of “arrogance” and “major shortcomings”.

It said the EEBC had been “transformed into a party to the dispute” after its ruling awarded contested territory – in particular the town of Badme where the war flared up - to Eritrea.

“That is also how conflict situations are aggravated by parties which are in fact given responsibility for defusing tension and for laying the basis for durable peace and stability,” the ministry said.

“Cloaking itself with the mantle that its ruling would be final and binding, it stubbornly stuck to it untenable position,” the statement added.

“Its President [Sir Elihu Lauterpacht] probably concluded that a poor country like Ethiopia would have to submit to his ruling whatever the merits of its argument.”

The Ethiopian government also criticised the EEBC for failing to make field visits to the border region, which it added, would have been “illuminating”.

“The situation calls for the thorough attention by the institution responsible for global peace and security, the UN, and the guarantors of the Algiers Agreement who could together help the parties overcome the failings of a Commission that has been transformed into a party to the dispute,” the statement said.

In an official statement last week, the Eritrean government warned that Ethiopia's "reckless position" could "plunge the region into another cycle of war and conflict".

Diplomatic sources commented that the peace process looks very shaky, and said it was unlikely that border demarcation - due this month - would go ahead as scheduled.

“We are at a loss to see how this one can be resolved or how Ethiopia can now work with the commission it has so strongly denounced,” one diplomat in Addis Ababa told IRIN.

Prime Minister Meles Zenawi has already branded the EEBC “null and void” in his annual address to the Ethiopian parliament last week.

Although both countries have publicly ruled out a return to conflict they insist on the right to self defence if provoked.

Sir Elihu, who heads the five-strong Hague-based legal team, had launched a point-by-point rebuttal earlier this month following criticism by Ethiopia of the EEBC's work.

Themes: (IRIN) Conflict

[ENDS]

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