Ethiopia-Eritrea border still in limbo
ASMARA, Sept 26 (AFP) — Nearly two and a half years after it was legally defined, the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea remains a notional line, one that has paralysed a crucial peace process between the Horn of Africa neighbours.
“Despite the peacekeeping, we haven’t moved an inch in the demarcation of the border,” Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, the head of a United Nations military mission to the two countries (UNMEE), said this week.
If everything had gone according to plan, the 1,000-kilometer (600-mile) border, defined by a special commission in 2002, in line with a peace accord signed two years earlier, would now boast a series of physical marker posts.
The demarcation process was meant to have been a key milestone in normalising relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea, who fought a brutal war over the border between 1998 and 2000 in which 80,000 people are estimated to have lost their lives.
Instead, the border remains closed to all but UNMEE traffic and ties between the states are all but non-existent.
The Boundary Commission, which sits in the Hague and is also responsible for demarcation, “is still alive but inactive”, said Legwaila, adding that the military situation on the border was “stable enough for a demarcation to be made.”
Although both parties agreed in the 2000 accord to respect the commission’s ruling as “final and binding”, Addis Ababa rejected it as “unjust” in September 2003, mainly because it failed to award the area of Badme, the original flashpoint of the war, to Ethiopia.
Since Ethiopia’s rejection, the physical border demarcation has been postponed indefinitely.
Eritrea has rejected Ethiopia’s calls for dialogue, refused to meet a specially appointed UN trouble-shooter and has repeatedly demanded that the international community take action against what it sees as Addis Ababa’s flouting of international law.
Several diplomats in Asmara, who asked to remain anonymous, have admitted that they did not see how to get out of this deadlock.
The UN Security Council, while extending UNMEE’s mandate to September 2005, has decided to scale down the force from its current 3,600 troops so as to reduce the mission’s 200-million-dollar (160-million-euro) annual budget.
“The problem is not Ethiopia anymore but the international community,” Eritrean President Isaias Afewerki’s chief of staff, Yemane Gebremeskel, told AFP this week.
“If there were a firm position taken in Brussels or Washington, this problem could be solved in a few days, if not hours,” he added.
According to a diplomat in Asmara who wished to remain anonymous, “Washington reprimands Addis Ababa in public over the border demarcation, but is more conciliatory behind the scenes because it wants Ethiopia to be its base in its fight against terrorism in the region”.
The two countries do not have the same weight, be it in terms of land area, or in terms of population.
Ethiopia covers 1.1 million square kilometres (440,000 square miles) and has about 67 million inhabitants, which makes it the second most populous state in sub-Saharan Africa, after Nigeria.
It is almost 10 times larger that Eritrea, which has a surface area of 121,000 square kilometres (48,000 square miles) and is home to about four million people.
Asked about Asmara’s refusal to receive the UN trouble-shooter, Lloyd Axworthy, Yemane replied: “Nobody has explained what is his mandate, what he is supposed to do”.
“Some diplomats tell us that if we receive Lloyd Axworthy it will look better. But Ethiopia has rejected an international law decision and it does not look worse,” he exclaimed.
At present, there are no signs from either side indicating a quick outcome to this dispute which opposes two of the world’s poorest nations.