Nigeria to mediate in dispute

2004-03-03 19:37

Abuja - Nigeria said on Wednesday it will try to resolve the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, to prevent the two Horn of Africa neighbours going to war again, Foreign Affairs Minister Olu Adeniji said.

"We will do something specifically to assist them. That something is primarily going to be in various stages. The first will be to appeal to both sides not to resort to war, which we have done already, because that will not solve anything permanent," the minister said.

He said he will also hold up as an example the peaceful resolution by Nigeria of its dispute with Cameroon over the potentially oil-rich Bakassi peninsula.

"The second is to give them the example as to what we have been doing with Cameroon as a way of resolving a crisis and that means both sides have to be open to a political dialogue," Adeniji said.

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a brutal two-year war over their common border in the late 1990s. A peace accord signed in Algiers in 2000 committed both nations to accept the ruling of an independent commission to determine their 1 000km border.

But Ethiopia rejected the commission's decision after it awarded the border town of Badme to Eritrea.

Adeniji said the Eritrean government has urged African leaders to intervene in the border dispute and to appeal to Ethiopia to implement the boundary commission's decision.

- AFP