John Negroponte, the current Security Council president and United States ambassador to the United Nations, said in a letter that council members had “deep regret” that Ethiopia was not willing to accept the ruling of Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission that has been demarcating the border.
The letter was handed to the Ethiopian government on Thursday, a diplomatic source said.
The boundary commission – part of the Hague-based Permanent Court of Arbitration – was set up after Ethiopia and Eritrea signed a peace deal in December 2000 that ended a 2½-year border war between the two impoverished Horn of Africa nations.
‘Ethiopia has felt it necessary to call on the Security Council’ Under the peace deal, the commission is supposed to demarcate the 1 000km boundary while about 4 000 UN troops patrolled a 25km-wide buffer zone along the border.
The boundary commission announced its decision in April 2002, and both countries had agreed to abide by it. But the Ethiopian government has criticised portions of the ruling that give certain areas to Eritrea, in particular the town of Badme, the war’s flashpoint. The town was administered by Ethiopia before the conflict.
In a September 22 letter to the Security Council, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi described the ruling by the commission as “a recipe for continued instability and even recurring wars”. He called on the Security Council to set up “an alternative mechanism” to demarcate the boundary’s contested areas.
But Negroponte said in his letter that “the members of the Security Council wish to convey to you their deep regret at the intention of the government of Ethiopia not to accept the entirety of the delimitation and demarcation decision as decided by the boundary commission”.
The boundary commission does not comment on its work, but the twice-delayed physical demarcation of the disputed border was supposed to begin this month. That, however, looks increasingly unlikely as tensions between Ethiopia and Eritrea rise.
In his letter, Negroponte expressed “serious concern at the continuous and abnormal absence of political dialogue” between the two countries.
On Thursday, Eritrea’s Foreign Minister Ali Said Abdella told the United Nations that Ethiopia “has threatened to unleash another war of aggression against Eritrea” if its conditions were not met.
In a speech to the General Assembly’s annual ministerial meeting, he said Ethiopia had informed UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan that Ethiopia had rejected the decision by the boundary commission.
A day earlier, Ethiopian Foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin told the meeting that the December 2000 agreement was designed to lead to durable peace between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and “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,” Seyoum said.
The border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea erupted in May 1998, and killed tens of thousands of people and cost both countries an estimated $1-million (about R7-million) a day. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but the border between the two was never formally demarcated.
Initially, the process was regarded as one of the United Nation’s easier peacekeeping missions in Africa because it involved two sovereign nations, both of which have disciplined armies.
Western nations lined up to send troops for the UN force, but nearly three years after the first UN soldiers landed, the process – which is costing around $250-million per year – is plagued by disputes.