Ethiopia approves U.N. flights to former foe Eritrea

ADDIS ABABA, Aug 20 (Reuters) – Ethiopia on Friday said it approved a U.N. request to operate direct flights between Addis Ababa and the Eritrean capital Asmara, replacing a circuitous route the U.N. adopted because of a war between the two states.

The two Horn of Africa nations fought a bitter border war that killed some 70,000 people before ending in 2000 in an uneasy truce.

“Prime Minister Meles Zenawi notified U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan that he has agreed to his request that United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) conduct direct flights between Ethiopia and Eritrea,” Ethiopia’s Information Ministry said in a statement.

Eritrean officials could not be reached for comment.

Ethiopia had blocked the United Nations from flying the straight-line route between the capitals, which takes under an hour, because the planes passed over one of its anti-aircraft batteries.

Instead, the U.N. planes took a five-hour trip that went well out of the way.

The flights required a stop in Assab, at Eritrea’s southern tip, a trip through Djibouti’s airspace and an overflight of the Red Sea to get to and from Asmara.

Annan’s request to let the planes fly the shorter, straighter route was seen as a way to reduce still-simmering tensions between the nations.

Ethiopia and Eritrea went to war in 1998 in a dispute over the small Ethiopian-run border town of Badme. An agreement signed in Algiers in 2000 ended the conflict.

But demarcation of the disputed border was put on hold after Ethiopia rejected a ruling by an independent boundary commission that said Badme was part of Eritrea. Under peace accords, both sides had agreed the commission’s ruling would be binding.

International efforts to find a solution have focused on the mission of Lloyd Axworthy, a former Canadian foreign minister who was named U.N. envoy to the peace process in December 2003.

Ethiopian officials have met Axworthy, but last month Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki said the envoy’s mission was now “dead” and the issue “closed” as far as he was concerned.