Eritrea rejects new moves to demarcate Ethiopia border

Feb 28, 2006 (ASMARA) — Eritrea has rejected as “utterly irrelevant” fresh moves to resolve a border dispute with Ethiopia that erupted into war once, and could do so again.

Last week, the U.S., the U.N., the European Union, the AU and Algeria – the five parties who witnessed and guaranteed a truce Eritrea and Ethiopia signed in 2000 – said the independent Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission should convene a meeting with the two nations and work out technical details on marking the border.

The U.N. Security Council backed the call.

But in a statement on the government’s Web site late Monday, Eritrea’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said no further talks are needed. Eritrea has repeatedly accused the international community of shirking its responsibility to ensure the border ruling made four years ago is implemented without further discussion.

The ministry said the April 2002 border commission ruling was “final and binding” and that all technical details on demarcating had already been worked out, making further “initiatives and consultations…utterly irrelevant.”

The Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission’s determined the border, but the physical demarcation has been postponed because of Ethiopia’s refusal to accept the decision. Ethiopia objects to the awarding of the disputed town of Badme to Eritrea.

An apparently frustrated Eritrea banned U.N. helicopter flights in October and expelled Western peacekeepers in December, heightening tensions and raising concerns of a renewed conflict. U.N. troops patrolling a 24 kilometer buffer zone between the two countries say they have been severely hampered in their task of alerting the world to any renewed fighting.

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war. Violence erupted again in 1998 and tens of thousands of people were killed in the 2 1/2 year border war that followed.

(ST/AP)