OWN CORRESPONDENT, Asmara | Sunday 12.20pm.
THE front lines in the war between Eritrea and Ethiopia were calm, an Eritrean presidential spokesman said on Sunday, hours after the signing of a peace agreement between the two countries.
News of the deal, brokered by the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and signed in the Algerian capital Algiers on Sunday, was largely greeted with indifference and scepticism in Asmara.
“This calm doesn’t mean much for the moment. The next two weeks will determine what happens,” said a veteran of the war of independence, adding that he did not feel like going out to celebrate.
“War could break out again at any moment unless a peacekeeping force is deployed,” he added.
The peace deal generated little interest on the streets of the Eritrean capital, largely deserted in the ferocious early afternoon heat, and no announcement of the signing had been broadcast by the state media by 3pm.
Haile, 60, sitting at a sidewalk cafe, welcomed the peace agreement, however. “It’s good news. Peace is a good thing, but it’s perhaps not quite the peace that we wanted,” he said.
There was some bitterness, too. “We’re fed up with war,” a man said, speaking anonymously. “Every Eritrean family has a son, a brother or a cousin at the front.
“The humanitarian consequences of this war are enormous. The harvest won’t take place and a large part of our people have been driven from their homes by the fighting” he said.
The peace plan allows for the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in a buffer zone which will extend along the border 25km into Eritrea.
It also calls for the withdrawal of Ethiopian troops from areas deep inside Eritrea, beyond disputed border regions which were at the root of the fighting that broke out in May 1998. — AFP