Ethiopia peace overture to Eritrea ‘positive’: EU

ADDIS ABABA, Dec 5 (AFP) — Ethiopia’s policy shifts aiming to restart the stalled peace process with neighboring Eritrea are positive, EU cooperation and development minister Louis Michel said Sunday.

“The tonality is very positive,” said Michel after meeting with Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and African Union commission president Alpha Oumar Konare.

Last month Meles signaled that Ethiopia accepted “in principle” an international ruling in 2002 designed to resolve a border dispute that sparked a devastating war between 1998 and 2000, a reversal of its earlier rejection of the decision.

Although Eritrea immediately thumbed its nose at the gesture, Michel said that was to be expected and “now we have to wait a bit and see what direction” events take.

Since the two countries signed an accord in Algiers in 2000 to end the war hardly any progress has been made in the peace process.

The border has remained closed to all but UN peacekeepers and bilateral relations have been limited to hostile declarations.

Since Ethiopia dismissed the April 2002 decision by the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission in September 2003, both states have refused to give an inch despite a desperate search by the international community for some kind of compromise.