Ethiopia-Eritrea talks on table

2006-05-11 13:59

Addis Ababa - United States-led talks to finalise the border between Ethiopia and Eritrea and end years of conflict between the two countries would resume on May 17 in London, said an official.

The US launched a diplomatic initiative in January to try to mark the contested border between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a dispute that led to a two-and-a-half-year war and had raised concerns of a renewed conflict.

An official in Ethiopia's ministry of foreign Affairs confirmed that the talks would begin next week in London, but spoke on condition of anonymity because such talks were usually not announced in advance.

Ethiopia, Eritrea sign truce

The official said that all of the countries that witnessed the signing of a truce between Ethiopia and Eritrea in December 2000 would send representatives to the meeting.

The peace agreement ended the border war and provided for an independent commission to rule on the disputed 621-mile (1 000-kilometre) boundary, while a United Nations peacekeeping mission patrolled a 15-mile (24-kilometre) buffer zone between the two countries.

Ethiopia had refused to implement the international boundary commission's April 2002 ruling, which awarded the key town of Badme to Eritrea.

Peacekeeping mission

Angered at the international community's failure to ensure that the ruling was obeyed, Eritrea banned UN helicopter flights and vehicle movements at night on its side of the buffer zone in October and ordered Western peacekeepers to leave the UN force in December.

The UN security council was scheduled to review the peacekeeping mission on May 15.

Last month, Ethiopia's Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pressed neighbouring Eritrea to accept negotiations over the commission's ruling as "the only sane option" for resolving the border dispute that had raised tensions in recent months.

Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but their border was never settled.

- AP