International community urged to help end border dispute

Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki on Monday urged the international community to pressure Ethiopia to end a border stand-off between the two countries, and claimed that the world seemed to favour Addis Ababa in the dispute. "We call on those that claim to tag themselves with the label of ‘the international community’- and who continue to allow that the rule of law be violated and our sovereign territories remain under occupation -to shoulder their responsibilities before it is too late," Isayas said at a gathering to mark Martyrs’ Day in the Eritrean capital, Asmara. The day is observed in remembrance of citizens who died during Eritrea’s three-decade war for independence from Ethiopia. Eritrea attained sovereignty in 1991, but the two countries took up arms again in 1998 over a border dispute. Although that conflict ended in a truce in 2000, a disagreement over the demarcation of the boundary has kept tensions between the two states high. In the December 2000 peace accord, both sides agreed that the ruling of an independent boundary commission would be "final and binding". When the commission made its ruling in April 2002, however, Ethiopia rejected it. Eritrea has refused to negotiate an international treaty. Asmara has called upon the international community do more to enforce the boundary commission's ruling, and has claimed that foreign economic, political, military and development aid to Ethiopia was aimed at extracting concessions from Eritrea. "It has become unambiguously clear that it is under the intensive care of sympathisers and the auspices of the UN and not through its own ability and ingenuity that the TPLF regime [the Ethiopian government] continues to occupy our sovereign territories - and drag the region into a dangerous predicament," Isayas said. In December 2004, more than 40,000 additional Ethiopian troops began to progress towards the border area in a move described by Ethiopia as "defensive". Eritrea called the troop movement a "provocative" act by its neighbour. In February 2005, the border commission invited both parties to meet in London. Eritrea accepted the invitation, but Ethiopia declined. In March, Legwaila Joseph Legwaila, the head of the UN peacekeeping force in Ethiopia and Eritrea, cautioned that the border stalemate could lead to another war. In April, a senior government official in Eritrea warned that the current situation is volatile. "The current situation is not sustainable. Sooner or later, it is going to deteriorate, it is going to lead to war," Yemane Ghebremeskel, director of the office of president, said. The military tensions and a prolonged drought have had a severe adverse effect on the Eritrean economy. The 2004 harvest was less than half the average of the previous 12 years, and some two-thirds of the country's 3.6 million people are currently in need of food aid. Eritrea’s gross domestic product per capita stands at US $130 per year, according to International Monetary Fund estimates. More than 70,000 people were killed during the 1998-2000 war. The armies of the two states now face each other across a 25 km-wide demilitarised zone that is patrolled by some UN 3,300 peacekeepers.