INTERVIEW-Ethiopia border stance promotes “jungle law”-Eritrea
By William Maclean
ASMARA, Dec 23 (Reuters) – Failure to force Ethiopia to abide by a settlement of a border row with former foe Eritrea promotes the law of the jungle and sets a bad precedent for peacekeeping everywhere, the Red Sea state said on Thursday.
Eritrean Information Minister Ali Abdu Ahmed said donors had to use their considerable leverage with aid-dependent Ethiopia to persuade it to honour a peace treaty that ended their 1998-2000 border war.
Both sides had agreed beforehand to accept a 2002 boundary commission ruling on their border dispute, but the Addis Ababa government rejected the decision when it went against Ethiopia.
Western countries worry that tensions between the Horn of Africa countries could trigger a new conflict, destabilising a volatile region that has been used a base by al Qaeda in the past and that continues to suffer drought and famine.
“Any failure to apply pressure would set a dangerous precedent in the world and would pave the way for the rule of the jungle to prevail over the rule of law,” Ahmed said.
Under the 2000 peace accord the United States, European Union and African countries agreed to use any means to pressure a party that failed in any way to abide by the treaty.
“It’s the duty of the international guarantors. We signed the agreement not because we trusted Ethiopia, but because the guarantors would take all necessary actions to ensure that Ethiopia complied with its terms.
“The guarantors are bound to take all actions including economic ones against any party not adhering to the treaty.”
Eritrea insists that Ethiopia accept in full the ruling of the independent boundary commission set up under the peace agreement to settle the argument, which lay at the heart of the two-year conflict in which about 70,000 people were killed.
The frontier is now patrolled by 4,000 U.N. peacekeepers at a cost of $200 million annually.
Eritrea has long accepted the ruling in its entirety while Ethiopia initially rejected it.
But last month Ethiopia said it finally accepted in principle the ruling, which said the prized town of Badme lay in Eritrea, not in Ethiopia which currently holds it.
Ethiopia’s surprise announcement added, however, that Addis Ababa wanted dialogue with Asmara on how to implement the ruling in the estimated 15 percent of the border that is contentious.
The statement has been widely interpreted as a call for negotiations over the border’s most disputed areas.
REALPOLITIK
Major powers are unanimous in saying reopening negotiations would go against promises both countries made to be bound by the ruling. The European Union last week echoed Eritrea’s call for Ethiopia to respect the border ruling in full.
Yet aid donors have yet to back their concern with pressure on Ethiopia to honour its obligations, Eritrea says.
“It’s not a political or diplomatic issue. It is a legal issue. We have to implement a legal verdict on the border, and the guarantors are bound to their mandate to pressure Ethiopia, which is refusing to accept the law,” Ahmed said.
Officials in Eritrea, which won effective independence from Ethiopia in 1991 after a 30-year guerrilla struggle, suspect concerns of realpolitik lie behind the international community’s apparent tolerance of Ethiopia’s behaviour.
Ethiopia, sub-Saharan Africa’s second most populous nation, is traditionally seen as the main power in the Horn of Africa and a regional linchpin of Washington’s “war on terror”.
It receives about $2 billion in aid annually including debt relief, food aid, budget support and development assistance.
Eritrea, a famously self-reliant country of 4 million, aims to avoid reliance on aid in any form, although it accepts emergency shipments of food in times of drought.