Eritrea asks Zimbabwe to act against
Ethiopia’s defiance of border ruling
www.chinaview.cn
HARARE,
June 25 (Xinhuanet) -- Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday received
Eritrean President Issaias Afewerki's special envoy, who delivered a message
requesting him to intervene in resolving a long-standing border dispute between
Eritrea and Ethiopia.
Speaking
to reporters after delivering the message, Eritrean Energy and Mines Minister
Tesfai Gebreselassie said that his country wanted Mugabe to exert his influence
on the African Union (AU) to take action against Ethiopia for reneging on the
verdict of a United Nations Commission established to resolve the dispute.
Territorial
disputes between the two Horn of Africa neighbors led to a war in 1998. The
Zimbabwean president was part of the high level delegation mandated by the AU
to see to a peaceful resolution of the dispute soon after it erupted in 1998.
After
two years of bitter fighting that left thousands of soldiers from both sides
dead, a peace agreement was reached in December 2000.
Under
the agreement, the parties agreed that a neutral BoundaryCommission be
established with a mandate to delimit and demarcate the boundary that divides
the two countries.
A
former Italian colony, Eritrea was occupied by the British in1941. In 1952, the
United Nations resolved to establish it as an autonomous entity federated with
Ethiopia. It split with Ethiopia in 1993.
A
United Nations peacekeeping force patrols a 25 km wide bufferzone along the
unmarked 1,000 km border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Demarcation of the
disputed border was indefinitely postponed after Ethiopia refused to back off.
Eritrea
has called for sanctions to force Ethiopia to accept the ruling, which was
supposed to be "final and binding" under theterms of a peace deal.
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