Eritrea will accept “mistaken” ruling on war – legal adviser

Jan 9, 2005 (ASMARA) — Eritrea will accept an international ruling that blamed it for starting a 1998-2000 border war with Ethiopia, despite dismissing the decision as a mistake, a senior legal adviser said on Monday.

The commission at the Permanent Court of Arbitration said last month Eritrea violated international law with an attack on Ethiopia in 1998 that sparked the war in which 70,000 people were killed.

The ruling came after military manoeuvres on both sides of the unmarked 1,000 km (620 mile) border between the two Horn of Africa neighbours, fuelling fears of a repeat of their war.

“We feel strongly that it is a mistake,” said Lea Brilmayer, a U.S. lawyer who has advised Eritrea for 10 years.

“We also feel very strongly that when you agree to settle something by going to arbitration then you run the risk that there is going to be mistakes and you have to accept that,” she told Reuters in an interview.

Five years after being established under a peace deal ending the war in 2000, the Hague-based commission ruled that Eritrea must compensate Ethiopia for the attack on the dusty border town of Badme.

The commission also found Ethiopia guilty of breaching international law, saying it was liable to Eritrea for allowing its soldiers to loot and burn buildings and destroy livestock in a number of towns and villages and for its failure to prevent several incidents of rape of Eritrean women.

Brilmayer said Eritrea plans to claim more than $500 million for damages done, an amount that would be offset by Ethiopia’s claim.

The commission is expected to rule on how much compensation is awarded to either side at a later date.

Eritrea may have started the war, but Ethiopia had taken a series of “provocative” actions beforehand, including temporary occupation of Eritrean territory in July 1997 and skirmishes in the week leading up to war, Brilmayer said.

“As far as we know all the deaths were on the Eritrean side,” she said of the skirmishes, noting an ambush which killed eight Eritrean soldiers on Eritrean territory.

Tensions have grown in the region since Ethiopia failed to fully accept a legally binding ruling that awarded Eritrea Badme.

Apparently frustrated by the international community’s failure to force Ethiopia to begin marking the border, Eritrea has banned U.N. helicopter flights and expelled U.N. peacekeepers from several Western countries.

The measures have reduced by more than half the United Nations’ ability to monitor the tense frontier of scrubby plains and dusty villages.

(Reuters)