US diplomat cancels Eritrea stop, arrives in Ethiopia
Jan 19, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — A senior US diplomat arrived here Thursday on a curtailed mediation mission intended to ease border tensions and help avert a potential new war between arch-rivals Ethiopia and Eritrea after Asmara snubbed her plans to visit.
A day after Washington called off her trip to Eritrea citing a lack of facilitation from authorities there, Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Jendayi Frazer was due to visit the Ethiopian side of the border and meet Ethiopian officials, the US embassy in Addis Ababa said.
“Miss Frazer arrived in Ethiopia today,” an embassy official said, adding that she plans to attend a summit of African Union leaders that opens on Monday in the Sudanese capital Khartoum.
Her trip, announced by US officials with great fanfare earlier this month, was to have begun in Asmara on Thursday but the State Department cancelled that leg on Wednesday, saying that Eritrean authorities were “not facilitating her travel to Eritrea.”
“The way we look at it is, it is their loss,” a US official said.
Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a two-year war that ended in 2000 after the loss of some 80,000 lives with both sides agreeing to accept a new border demarcation from an international panel.
But Ethiopia then rejected the new border line and Eritrea has repeatedly warned that a new conflict is looming.
Frazer’s mission was intended to look at ways to jumpstart the moribund process of implementing the 2002 decision but Eritrea, which has angrily denounced the United Nations and world powers for failing to force Ethiopia to accept it, had been cool to the visit.
Eritrea’s information ministry questioned the legality and relevance of the trip and on Wednesday, Yemane Gebremeskel, the cabinet director for President Isaias Afeworki, suggested the mission was unnecessary as Frazer had met on Friday in Washington with a senior Eritrean official.
“A meeting has taken place already last week in Washington between a senior Eritrean delegation headed by Yemane Gebreab and Mrs Frazer,” he told AFP.
Yemane Gebreab is the head of political affairs for the People’s Front for Democracy and Justice, Eritrea’s sole political party.
In Ethiopia, Frazer met Thursday with Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, the head of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), whose peacekeeping operations along the border have been severely curtailed by Eritrean restrictions, diplomats said.
She was to travel later Thursday to northern Ethiopia to visit the border before meeting on Friday with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi to discuss the situation with Eritrea and other matters, including Addis Ababa’s recent crackdown on opposition groups which has prompted deep donor concerns.
Earlier this week, UNMEE reported that Eritrea and Ethiopia were continuing to blame each other for the deadlock with the Eritreans renewing longstanding complaints that the UN Security Council is biased in favor of its much-larger neighbor.
The council has threatened sanctions against both countries if they do not reduce troop levels on the border and against Eritrea alone if it does not lift restrictions imposed on UNMEE.
Asmara maintains the UNMEE restrictions, which include a ban on helicopter flights and the expulsion of all the mission’s North American and European staff from its territory, are a side issue and that the real cause of the stalemate is Ethiopia’s refusal to accept the border demarcation.
(ST/AFP)