Nairobi | Sunday
ERITREA announced on Sunday that it had accepted an international ruling on its border with Ethiopia – over which it fought a devastating war – as ”final and binding”.
Under a December 2000 peace accord both sides pledged to accept the border ruling by the panel in The Hague as ”final and binding” and therefore ”the question of acceptance of the decision is superfluous,” Eritrea’s ruling party said.
”The ruling is a victory for the people of Ethiopia, but it is the Eritrean people who have emerged most victorious,” the ruling Popular Front for Democracy and Justice (PFDJ) said on its website.
”In the final analysis, the end of the war on the basis of a legal determination is a victory for both the Eritrean and Ethiopian peoples,” the statement said.
The ruling of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Border Commission, which has not been published, was handed over to the two governments on Saturday.
Ethiopia immediately claimed that all the disputed border areas – Badme and its surroundings, Zala Anbesa, Aiga, Alitena and the district of Irob – are and will remain ”Ethiopian sovereign territories”.
The areas were the scenes of some of the fiercest fighting in the war that began in May 1998, claiming tens of thousands of young soldiers’ lives before a ceasefire in June 2000.
The five-member Boundary Commission, a neutral body of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, was tasked with determining the exact path of the 1 000-kilometre border between Ethiopia and its former province Eritrea.
The frontier has been in dispute since Asmara officially won independence from Addis Ababa in 1993. The creation of Eritrea rendered Ethiopia landlocked.
The commission said in a statement earlier this week that its decision would not be presented to the public, but only to the representatives of the two governments, as well as to the secretaries general of the Organisation for African Unity (OAU) and the United Nations.
When Ethiopia and Eritrea took up arms in May 1998 over their poorly defined common border, the conflict was described as ”Africa’s most senseless war” that lasted nearly two years.
After a ceasefire, they signed a formal peace accord in December 2000, which established the commission in charge of defining the border.
about 4 200 UN soldiers and monitors are deployed in a buffer zone dividing the two countries’ armies. – Sapa-AFP