Isayas calls for action to "compel" Ethiopia to accept border ruling

Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki has insisted that Ethiopia must be "compelled" by the international community to implement a suspended border ruling. In a two-page letter to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, the Eritrean leader said that was the "only way" to resolve the ongoing border dispute between his country and Ethiopia. His letter, sent on 24 December, was in response to a letter Annan had sent two days earlier informing him of his decision to appoint former Canadian Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy as his special envoy to help resolve the crisis between the two countries. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought a bloody two-and-a-half-year war over their disputed border that claimed 70,000 lives and cost the impoverished nations millions of dollars. Finally, under a peace deal signed in Algiers in December 2000, both countries agreed to the setting up of an independent boundary commission to end tensions by demarcating their common border. However, Ethiopia rejected the commission's April 2002 ruling, and the physical demarcation of the border, which was due to have been effected last year, was then suspended indefinitely. Addis Ababa's main contention is that an Ethiopian-administered town, Badme, where the war first flared up in May 1998, was placed by the ruling in Eritrea. Although Isayas's letter was a setback to the faltering peace process, senior diplomats in Addis Ababa said, it was did not sound the death knell to Axworthy's mission. "The Axworthy vision is not stillborn," one ambassador said in Addis Ababa on Saturday. "It is still a worthy initiative and probably the only move that can break this deadlock. If you read the letter carefully, it doesn’t reject the idea of an envoy." The Eritrean president said in his letter that demarcation of the 1,000-km border had stalled because Ethiopia had "flagrantly flouted" international law. He asserted that both the UN and the international community had failed to take action against Ethiopia in this respect. "The stalemate or impasse that you alluded to in your letter has occurred simply because the international community, including your high office, has failed to take necessary legal measures of enforcement that are warranted by the Algiers Peace Agreements," he said.. "If there really was a border dispute between Eritrea and Ethiopia, it has been settled through legal means," he added, referring to The Hague-based boundary commission. Isayas went on say that Eritrean territory remained "occupied by force" and that the "rule of law" continued to be "trampled" on by Ethiopia’s refusal to implement the ruling. "A new mechanism to substitute the Algiers Peace Agreement and the decision of the Boundary Commission will not only be illegal, but will also create a dangerous precedent," he warned.