Ethiopia-Eritrea border talks postponed
April 27, 2006 (ADDIS ABABA) — Talks set for this week aimed at resolving border tensions between arch-rival Horn of Africa neighbors Ethiopia and Eritrea have been postponed, UN and diplomatic sources said.
The meeting of an international panel that delineated a new frontier in accordance with a 2000 peace deal that ended a bloody two-year border war was due to begin Friday in London, but has been indefinitely delayed, they said.
“The talks have been cancelled apparently because the head of the boundary commission is sick,” said an official with the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) that monitors the border and is organizing the meeting.
“The talks have been postponed indefinitely,” a diplomatic source familiar with the situation said on condition of anonymity in the Ethiopian capital.
The meeting was to have been the second the panel has held since it issued a binding border demarcation in 2002 that Ethiopia has thus far refused to accept, drawing the increasing wrath of Eritrea.
Both countries had been expected to send representatives to the talks which had met with no result in early March as part of a US-initiated UN drive to ease growing fears of a new war between the two nations.
Eritrea maintains that Ethiopia’s refusal to accept the panel’s ruling — which awarded the flashpoint border town of Badme to Asmara — could lead to new hostilities and is the root cause of the current tensions.
It has repeatedly hit out at the United Nations and world powers, particularly the United States, for failing to force Addis Ababa to accept the new border.
To signal its displeasure with the world body it has imposed restrictions on UNMEE peacekeepers on its territory, including a ban on helicopter flights and expelling the mission’s North American and European staff.
The UN Security Council has threatened to slap sanctions on Eritrea unless it rescinds the restrictions, but Asmara has thus far refused to comply.
Earlier this month, the council said that unless its demands were met by May 1, it would review UNMEE’s mandate by May 15, with a view to adjustments, including the possible downgrading of the mission.
(ST)