Eritrea eager to open border

2005-12-02 18:00

Asmara - Eritrea and Sudan are moving to re-open their common border after a three-year closure as they cement an end to a decade of frosty ties, officials from both nations said here on Friday.

Amid soaring border tensions between Eritrea and arch-foe neighbour Ethiopia to the south, officials from Asmara and Khartoum expressed optimism the east-west Eritrean-Sudanese frontier would be open soon.

"We are hopeful," Sudan's deputy foreign minister Elsamani Elwasleea told reporters during a two-day visit to Eritrea with Sudanese vice president Salva Kiir aimed at pushing ahead with normalising long strained relations.

He said the re-opening of border crossings closed in 2002 amid mutual recriminations would be part of talks set to start next week in Asmara between Sudanese Foreign Minister Lam Akol and senior Eritrean officials.

Akol is due in the Eritrean capital on Tuesday, according to the Sudanese embassy in Asmara.

A senior Eritrean government official said Eritrea was also eager to reopen the border and foresaw few complications to such a move.

'We have the same sentiment as the Sudanese'

"There shouldn't be any problem, we have the same sentiment as the Sudanese," the official said.

Over the last decade, relations between the two countries have been strained by mutual accusations that each was harbouring rebel groups hostile to the other.

In October 2002, the border was closed after Khartoum accused Asmara of supporting an offensive by Sudanese rebels on its territory and both sides traded steady streams of invective.

Both were swapping angry accusations as recently as June when Sudan warned that the Sudanese-Eritrean border could "explode" if Eritrea continued alleged support to rebels operating in its east Red Sea state.

But following implementation of a January peace deal that ended Sudan's 21-year north-south civil war and as Eritrea stepped up saber-rattling rhetoric with Ethiopia, Asmara and Khartoum agreed to resolve their differences.

In September, Eritrea and Sudan announced an end to "more than 10 years of estrangement" in a move some saw as a bid by Eritrea to secure its border with Sudan in case of a resumption in the 1998-2000 war it fought with Ethiopia.

Eritrean officials have denied this is the case.

- AFP