US initiative chance for peace between Ethiopia, Eritrea
Jan 11, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — A U.S. attempt to get Ethiopia to accept the border with Eritrea drawn by an international commission offers a chance for peace, but carries the risk of failure, a senior U.N. official said Wednesday.
Monday, U.S. Ambassador John Bolton told the U.N. Security Council a high-powered U.S. delegation would travel to the two countries “to discuss how to begin implementation of the demarcation process” nearly four years after an international commission ruled on the boundary.
Under a December 2000 peace agreement following a 2 1/2-year border war, Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to abide by an independent commission’s ruling on the position of the disputed 1,000-kilometer border. But Ethiopia has refused to implement the April, 2002, ruling, which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea. Eritrea has angrily pressed the international community to force Ethiopia to relent.
“I believe it (the U.S mission) is a chance for peace and I expect the parties to contribute to that,” said Azouz Ennifar, deputy head of the U.N. mission for the two countries. “There is no doubt in this very difficult situation any initiative has risks.”
“There are risks that it doesn’t work and there are risks that it works,” Ennifar told journalist through a satellite video link from the Eritrean capital, Asmara.
Amid mounting concern that both sides were massing troops near the buffer zone as a prelude to a new war, Eritrea in October banned U.N. helicopter flights and vehicle movements at night on its side of the buffer zone. In December, the U.N. agreed to its demand that Western peacekeepers leave the force monitoring Eritrea.
Ethiopia has since pulled back a “significant number of troops” while Eritrea has said that its troops near the border are harvesting crops, U.N. officials said.
“Everybody was expecting a political move for quite a while that would try to break this crisis situation and this is why it was highly welcomed,” Ennifar said. “Every effort is highly welcomed and everything should be directed to breaking this political stalemate to try to put the peace process that was agreed five years ago back on track.”
(AP/ST)