UN seeks Eritrea-Ethiopia talks
2004-07-03 22:25
Addis Ababa - UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, seeking to rekindle the stalled peace process between Ethiopia and Eritrea, on Saturday expressed deep concern over the glacial pace of talks between the two nations, locked in a border dispute that has cost hundreds of thousands of lives.
Negotiations have hardly moved since the Horn of Africa neighbours ended a war in 2000.
Some 4 200 United Nations peacekeepers patrol a temporary security zone established on Eritrean territory along the frontier with Ethiopia, at an annual cost of $200m.
Annan told UN workers in the Eritrean capital of Asmara, which he visited before flying here, that the world organization wants to end this arrangement.
"Our intention is not to stay here forever," he said.
When they ended their two year border war in June, 2000, the two sides agreed to abide by an independent frontier commission meeting in The Hague.
But Ethiopia rejected the decision of the commission last year, saying it refused to split families and villages, and Eritrea has called on the international community to take measures against Ethiopia, Africa's third most populous country after Nigeria and Egypt, with 67m inhabitants.
"The international community is very worried and the secretary general himself is worried to see that things are not advancing as he would have liked to see them advance," said the head of UN peacekeeping operations, Jean-Marie Guehenno.
Eritrean President Issaias Afeworki in turn urged Annan to ensure that the decision of the frontier commission is put into effect as soon as possible.
The Eritrean government has refused to meet former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy, appointed by Annan in January to unblock the border stalemate, saying that the question "cannot be the subject of diplomatic talks."
But Guehenno said negotiations were on the right track following the secretary general's meeting with Afeworki, and that Axworthy would meet Eritrean authorities "in the months to come."
Annan was scheduled to hold talks with Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi on the problem, before attending a forum in Addis Ababa to discuss ways of fighting hunger in Africa, the world's poorest continent.
The impasse is fuelled and compounded by the bitter animosity between Afeworki and Zenawi, who are cousins who fought together to topple the Marxist regime of Haile Mengistu Mariam.