UN appeals for peaceful resolution of border dispute

The UN has called on Ethiopia and Eritrea to stop an ongoing war of words over their border dispute that sparked fighting four years ago, and instead concentrate on the search for peace. "I have personally pleaded with the two sides to lower the temperature, to make sure that we concentrate on the search for a peaceful end to this conflict," Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, head of the UN Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE), told a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, on Thursday. Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi warned Eritrea earlier this week that attempts to turn tough words into military action would "endanger the peace of the region". His comments followed demands by Eritrea that Ethiopia withdraws from territory along the 1,000-km border, which it says Addis Ababa had illegally occupied. Tensions also rose when Asmara accused Addis Ababa of sending troops into a remote Eritrean village in November. Ethiopia denied the accusations and UN peacekeepers patrolling the region said they had found no evidence to support the accusation. Noting that the four-year-old peace process had been dogged by "expressions of bitterness" from both sides, Legwaila said as yet, neither side had breached the ceasefire signed in June 2000. However, he added, no progress had been made in ending the stalemate over the physical demarcation of the border. "I pray and hope that this will be realised in the course of 2005," Legwaila added. "All of us should try to help them to realise that whether they like it or not they are not going to reshuffle themselves [from] where geography has condemned them to be. "In order for them to live in peace with each other, they have to realise that they are condemned by history to live together as neighbours," he continued. Last month, Ethiopia accepted "in principle" a ruling on the border that was made as a part of a peace deal, which ended the two-and-a-half year war. The ruling on the border was made in April 2002 by an internationally appointed commission. It was initially rejected by Ethiopia, which still insists that the decision by the commission to award Badme - the border town where the war flared up - to Eritrea, was wrong. On Tuesday, Eritrea called on Ethiopia to abide by the ruling, saying the wrangle could be resolved if Addis Ababa withdrew "its forces from sovereign Eritrean territories". It said the border stalemate had dislocated 60,000 people from their homes and villages and created "clouds of another unnecessary and unjustifiable confrontation".