Ethiopian bid to redraw border
2003-10-02 09:07
New York - Ethiopia expressed frustration on Wednesday at having lost the border town of Badme to Eritrea in an independent boundary ruling following the nations' two-and-a-half-year war, and called on the Security Council to intervene and return the town to Ethiopian rule.
Last year, the independent Hague-based Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission disappointed Ethiopia by drawing a border that put Badme, the flashpoint of the 1998-2000 war, in Eritrea.
The twice-delayed permanent demarcation is supposed to begin this month with the driving of the first of 64 pillars to mark the border.
Both nations had signed a peace accord in Algiers and agreed to abide by the decisions of the commission, but Ethiopia never foresaw that it would lose any territory following what it regarded as an unprovoked attack by Eritrea. The town was administered by Ethiopia before the conflict.
On Wednesday, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told the General Assembly that "with little hesitation" Ethiopia withdrew from territory that it has seized in a counteroffensive to expel the invading army from its territory.
Not meant to punish
"The Algiers Agreement was designed to lead to durable peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea. It was not meant to punish the victim of aggression. That is why Ethiopia has felt it necessary to call on the Security Council to help us,' he said.
He said Ethiopia was determined to resolve its problems peaceably "and this is how we intend to tackle the present complications".
Ethiopia has formally rejected the ruling of the Boundary Commission, and Eritrea on Friday called for international sanctions against the neighbouring Horn of Africa nation.
The bitterness of the conflict was evident later on Wednesday, when Eritrean representative Amari Tekle took the floor of the General Assembly to denounce Ethiopia for reneging on its original acceptance of the Boundary Commission's decisions.
"Ethiopia's rulers have in fact made it clear that they do not regard themselves as bound by international law and decisions... and are threatening to unleash another round of war if the decision of the arbitration commission is not reversed by the Security Council legally,' he said. "Yet they call themselves law-abiding, peace-loving victims of aggression."
An Ethiopian delegate, Seifeselaisse Kidane, retorted that the Boundary Commission had never visited Badme, and had pencilled in a border line that "divides not only villages but homesteads".
Since Eritrea refused to discuss any revisions to the border line, Ethiopia was calling on the Security Council to help resolve the "anomalies," Kidane said.
In a letter last month to the UN Security Council, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi called the ruling by the Ethiopia-Eritrea Boundary Commission "a recipe for continued instability and even recurring wars".
He called on the Security Council to set up "an alternative mechanism" to demarcate the contested areas of the boundary.
In a statement on Friday, the Eritrean Foreign Ministry called on the international community "to live up to its obligations" as signatories of the Algiers agreement and declare Ethiopia in breach of its treaty obligations "and impose the full range of sanctions on Ethiopia on the basis of Chapter 7 of the UN Charter".
Buffer zone
Under the peace agreement, the boundary commission - part of the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration - was formed to demarcate the thousand-kilometre boundary while about four thousand UN troops patrolled a 25km wide buffer zone along the border.
When the commission announced its decision in April 2002, both countries agreed to abide by it. But the Ethiopian government subsequently criticised portions of the ruling that give certain areas to Eritrea, in particular Badme.
The boundary commission does not comment publicly on its work.
- AP