Ethiopia rejects border
ruling
Same way it did the
first time
04
Dec. 2004, ED News - While the world
was waiting to see what is new in Ethiopia’s “Acceptance in principle”
proposal for peace with Eritrea, Ethiopia’s PM could not wait to let the
world know that there is nothing new in his “new initiative” but repackaging
and renaming of the same, long rebuffed and old position.
On Friday,
03 December 2004, PM Meles made his country’s partial acceptance of the
border ruling and the demand to renegotiate the ruling over the remaining
rest clear. To that effect, Meles
told resident diplomats in Addis Ababa in a briefing session attended by
reporters that “On the so-called 85 percent of the boundary (with Eritrea),
we have said all along that we don't have any objection and it can be
demarcated straight away," Moreover, “disagreement over the remaining 15
percent of the border could be solved through dialogue with Eritrea”. This exactly how Ethiopia rejected the
decision of the Boundary Commission in September of 2003. Then, the world
body’s highest organ, the Security Council rebuffed Ethiopia’s partial
acceptance/demarcation in no uncertain terms and called and continues to call on Ethiopia to accept the
ruling in its entirety and to cooperate with the boundary Commission.
At that time PM Meles wrote
- Security Council set up an
alternative mechanism to demarcate the contested parts of the boundary
in a just and legal manner so as to ensure lasting peace in the region.
- The uncontested parts of
the Boundary, specifically the whole eastern Sector of the Boundary and
that part of the Central Sector where the river Mareb constitutes the
boundary, can be demarcated without waiting for the setting up of the
alternative mechanism
Only
difference here is that this time around it’s all presented in a politically
correct form: Dialogue instead of alternative mechanism, ‘acceptance in
principle’ instead of rejection, and 15% and 85% of the border instead of contested
and uncontested parts respectively.
Ethiopia’s
revival and reiteration of its long denied and old position shutters all the
hope for a breakthrough in the stalled peace process that people might have falsely
expected from Ethiopia’s “new initiative for peace with Eritrea”, and
Ethiopia remains defiant.
The
Algiers Agreement, which ended the bloody border war between Eritrea and
Ethiopia, and the nature of Boundary Commission’s decision dictate that the
border ruling be accepted in its entirety.
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