Ethiopia blames Eritrea’s inability to ‘behave like a normal state’
Sept 28, 2006 (UNITED NATIONS) — Ethiopia told the U.N. General Assembly it wants to normalize relations with Eritrea because it needs durable peace, but it accused its Horn of Africa neighbor of refusing to “behave like a normal state.”
Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but their border was never settled. In April 2002, following a 2 1/2-year border war, an international boundary commission awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea — but Ethiopia has refused to implement the deal.
Ethiopia’s deputy U.N. ambassador Negash Kebret, addressing the assembly’s ministerial meeting on its final day on Wednesday, said his country was committed to peace and security in the Horn of Africa region — much as its foe might try to disrupt the efforts.
“Ethiopia will not allow its dispute with Eritrea to distract it from its focus on development, although this is the main mission of Eritrea since the conflict began eight years ago,” Kebret said.
In a speech to the assembly on Monday, Eritrea’s Health Minister Saleh Meky accused the West — and particularly the United States _ of insincere rhetoric and of siding with Ethiopia in the two countries’ border dispute.
Angered at the international community’s failure to ensure that the boundary commission’s ruling is obeyed, Eritrea banned U.N. helicopter flights and vehicle movements at night on its side of the buffer zone and ordered Western peacekeepers to leave the U.N. force in December.
Meky said years of failure to resolve the border dispute were a result of the West’s condoning Ethiopia’s violations of a peace settlement.
“To single out Ethiopia as the primary and only culprit would be missing the forest for the woods,” he said. “The fact is Ethiopia has neither the power not the political skill to defy international law for a single day, let along for four long years.”
Ethiopia’s Kebret insisted the fault was entirely Eritrea’s.
“For the last four years, Eritrea has been blaming Ethiopia for its own aggression against us and for the current stalemate in peace and demarcation process,” Kebret said.
“And in fact now, the whole world is blamed for Eritrea’s own failure and for its inability to behave like a normal state,” he said.
Kebret accused Eritrea of a “warped understanding of international law,” of an “illegal and anti-peace stance,” and of “naked violations” of the Algiers peace settlement which ended the war in 2000.
Nonetheless, Kebret stressed his country’s eagerness to normalize its relations with Eritrea _ though he emphasized that there was no love lost between the two neighbors.
“Ethiopia does so not because it is desperate for closer relations with Eritrea, but rather because normalization is critical for durable peace,” he said.
“But Eritrea would have none of this. Why? Because Eritrea’s strategic goal is neither peace nor a peaceful common boundary. What it wishes to have is interminable border problem with Ethiopia.”
Ethiopia has called for negotiations to break the stalemate over Badme, but Eritrea refuses to talk unless Ethiopia accepts the boundary commission ruling.
Kebret said Ethiopia would proceed with working on a settlement, only if Eritrea would first cooperate with the measures designed by the international community.
“It is only when Eritrea decides to cooperate with these legal measures that we can begin to resolve the dispute in accordance with international law.
“Eritrea should behave as a responsible state and resolve any dispute through diplomatic measures,” he said. “Its continued dangerous tactics of brinkmanship against many actors in international community should not be acceptable.”
(AP/ST)