US mediation team arrives in Addis Ababa

A high-level mediation team from the United States has arrived in Ethiopia to try and break the border dispute with neighbouring Eritrea, the US embassy in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said on Thursday. Assistant Secretary of State Jendayi Frazer will spend four days in Ethiopia and will visit the two countries' contested border region. She is also expected to meet Prime Minister Meles Zenawi. During the trip, she will also witness the severe drought that has hit some 1.75 million people in the extreme southeast of Ethiopia. She is then scheduled to travel to Khartoum, Sudan, to attend an African Union summit that opens there on Monday. However, Frazer cancelled a planned visit to Eritrea because the Eritrean government would not facilitate the trip, a US official in Washington DC said on Wednesday. Eritrea insists that Ethiopia should accept a 2002 ruling by an independent border commission that demarcated the border following a peace deal that ended a bloody two-year war between the two neighbours. It opposes any reopening of negotiations on the subject. Last week, an Eritrean government statement expressed strong reservations about the US mission. "The government of Eritrea reaffirms again that such endeavours will only entail further delay and suffering and will not consequently have any legality and political relevance," the statement said. Eritrea gained independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year guerrilla war, but the border between the two nations was never formally demarcated. War erupted in 1998, killing tens of thousands of people. Both countries agreed to abide by the commission's ruling on the position of the disputed 1,000-km border while UN troops patrolled a 25-km buffer zone between them. However, Ethiopia has refused to implement the ruling, which awarded the key border town of Badme to Eritrea. Angered by the international community's failure to compel Ethiopia to obey the ruling, Eritrea banned in October all UN helicopter flights and vehicle movements at night on its side of the buffer zone.