Eritrea boycotts AU Summit in protest to Ethiopia’s defiance of border
ruling
Asmara, Eritrea, June 25 (AFP) -- Eritrea said Friday it
would not attend next month's African Union (AU) summit in Ethiopia because of
what it called Addis Ababa's illegal occupation of its sovereign territory.
"I
don't think we can possibly send a representative of our country to Ethiopia
when Ethiopia... is forcibly occupying our sovereign territory," Yemane
Gebremeskel, President Issaias Afeworki's chief of staff, told AFP.
The
official also accused Ethiopia of violating international law and the founding
charter of the AU, which replaced the Organisation of African Unity in 2002 and
which has its headquarters in Addis Ababa.
The
Horn of Africa neighbours went to war between 1998 and 2000, mainly over a
border dispute that remains unresolved.
Ethiopia
has rejected a ruling on the path of the border handed down by an international
commission in 2002, saying it contradicted other provisions of a peace accord
the two countries signed in Algiers in 2000.
Eritrea,
meanwhile, has dismissed appeals for a negotiated settlement, insisting that
under the Algiers accord, both sides undertook to accept the ruling as final
and binding.
Four
years after the last shots were fired, the border remains closed, the process
of physically marking it out has not begun and relations are virtually
non-existent.
"We
have sent several envoys to African countries with messages from President
Issaias Afeworki to explain our position and ask the AU to take a very clear
stand on this issue," said Yemane Gebremeskel.
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