Eritrea accepts border war ruling

Jan 4, 2005 (NAIROBI) — Eritrea has reluctantly accepted an international panel’s ruling that it was to blame for hostilities that led to a bloody two-year border war with Ethiopia, but lashed out at its archrival neighbor for rejecting a binding boundary demarcation.

In a statement released late on January 3, Eritrea’s foreign ministry said that it disagreed with, but would honor, a December finding from a commission assessing damage claims from the 1998-2000 conflict that it had violated international law in launching attacks that sparked the war.

At the same time, it renewed accusations that Ethiopia was in breach of a 2000 peace deal and stepped up criticism of the United Nations for not forcing Addis Ababa to accept the new border, which was drawn up in 2002 and awarded the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea.

The ministry’s statement was Asmara’s first official acknowledgement that The Hague-based Ethiopia-Eritrea Claims Commission (EECC) had on December 19 found Eritrea responsible for the clashes that started the war.

It said that even though Eritrea believed that the case against it had not been proven it would respect the commission’s decision.

“Eritrea presented substantial evidence to the contrary, arguing in its written and oral pleadings that Ethiopia’s aggression [was] the proximate cause of the war’s beginning,” it said.

“Despite its strong disagreement with the commission’s conclusion, Eritrea remains committed to honoring the award, on the grounds of respect for international rule of law,” the ministry said.

It stressed that Ethiopia had not shown similar respect for the rule of law because it had refused to accept the border ruling giving Badme to its neighbor.

That decision was issued by a sister panel to the claims commission as part of the agreement signed in Algiers to end the war between the Horn of Africa states, which claimed some 80,000 lives.

“For almost four years now, the Ethiopian regime has flouted international law to occupy sovereign territories of a UN member state in violation of the UN Charter and the Algiers Peace Agreement,” it said.