Eritrea snubs U.N. on Ethiopia border row

ASMARA, June 17 (Reuters) – Eritrea’s government has snubbed a U.N special envoy trying to solve a bitter border dispute with neighbouring Ethiopia, diplomats said on Thursday.

Four years after a war over the frontier which killed 70,000, a U.N. spokeswoman said Eritrea’s government would not meet the envoy but would send an official in its place — which diplomats said constituted a backhanded insult.

“Diplomatically speaking this is a bit of a no no,” a senior diplomat said of Eritrea’s proposal to send its own envoy to meet the U.N.’s envoy, former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy.

“Appointing your own envoy to meet with the U.N. envoy is just not on,” he added. The Eritrean government was not immediately available for comment.

The diplomat expected Axworthy to attend the meeting regardless because he had made so little progress with Eritrea.

Appointed six months ago to mediate the 1,000 km (620 miles) border between the two Horn of Africa countries, Axworthy received a warm welcome in Ethiopia but was refused entry to Eritrea, which sees his appointment as illegal and an attempt to appease its neighbour.

U.N. spokeswoman Gail Bindley-Taylor Sainte, who told a news conference the Eritrean government would send its own envoy, did not say whether this move represented a snub or a thawing of relations.

“I don’t know whether it is a positive development or not,” she said. “I think we have to wait and see what happens.”

Western powers, including a European Union delegation, have tried to raise international awareness of the risk posed by heightened tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea, whose warfare over the border recalled the trench tactics of World War One.

Eritrea has urged other countries to impose sanctions on Ethiopia, who refused over a year ago to accept an independent boundary commission ruling on the disputed frontier.