Ethiopia must accept ‘NO’ for an answer
Commentary
By
TED
15
Nov 2004
When US
diplomat for African affairs Donald Yamamoto arrived in Eritrea on 6 Dec
2004 to
discuss with authorities a new Ethiopian proposal, Ethiopia was expecting
(fantasizing) Yamamoto to change the hearts of Eritrean officials in favor of its
fraudulent proposal. And one diplomat, who did not want be named told AFP
that "Mr Yamamoto must obtain
quite quickly a more positive response from Asmara to the Ethiopian proposal.
If nothing comes out of this meeting, that will be a bad sign". And that is what happened: Mr. Yamamoto told
Eritrea’s president “that the US government remains firm on its last January statement on the
Eritrea-Ethiopia border dispute, which stated the boundary commission's ruling
as final and binding and that it should be implemented without any
preconditions”. But that is not what Ethiopia wanted or was expecting to hear.
Anything short of endorsing “Ethiopia’s proposal” is negative. And Ethiopia
won’t accept ‘NO’ for an answer.
“The US government has not
yet issued a statement on the peace proposal; "I do not believe the US has rejected
our proposal. However they have not issued a statement welcoming our proposal
either"; a
high level delegation has been sent to the United States this week to urge the
US government to issue a statement welcoming the proposal.” said Meles at a
press conference held on Monday 13 Dec 04 in Addis Ababa jointly with visiting
German President.
The
US or any other Nation for that matter doesn’t issue a statement every time an
issue comes up on which it has already an established stance in one form or the
other (press release, statement) but refers the issue to that document. And
that is exactly what Yamamoto did. If it makes Ethiopia feel better, the US
wouldn’t have a problem re-issuing January 21 2004 statement on this matter?
A
decision about an issue follows a binary logic: The options (reject/support)
rule each other out. The US has rejected Ethiopia’s fraudulent proposal by not
endorsing it, thereby ruling out support for the proposal and calling for
strict adherence to the Algiers Peace Accord as per its statement of January 21
2004 instead. And Ethiopia knows that. But Ethiopia won’t and doesn’t accept
‘NO’ for answer and that is why it is dispatching a delegation to let the US
know that failure to support its fraudulent proposal means war:
"Whether
the US issues a statement or not, we very much hope that their position will be
in line with the position taken by international community as a whole, which
means that war is not an option," said Meles.
The
Algiers peace Accord, which was authored and has the full support of the
international community even as we speak, was signed because Eritrea and
Ethiopia agreed to resolve whatever differences they have peacefully and
peacefully only and to rule out war as an option at all. No, Meles is not
referring to that international community! Meles is referring to the nations
that have expressed apparent support for his proposal and is implying their
endorsement rules out war as an option and wants US policy to be in line with that
if war is to be eliminated as an option, simply because a legal decision did
not go its way. What a joke?
PM
Meles is fantasizing about the significance of the reaction to his “proposal.
The reaction of those nations to Ethiopia’s fraudulent proposal can only mean
acknowledgement of Ethiopia’s decision to stop running around trashing the
decision of a court of law, flouting international law, and flagrant defiance
of the rule of law [as demanded by those nations by PM Meles’ own admission]
because not one single nation has rescinded its support of the Boundary
Commission and its decision or called for review of the Commission’s decision,
no one nation has declared the Algiers peace Accord null and void or called for
renegotiation of the agreement.
Having
said that, the US stance on the Eritrea/Ethiopia issue favors neither Eritrea
nor Ethiopia.
The statement that was issued by the US Dept. of State on January 21, 2004
said, “The Algiers Peace Accord, ending the
Ethiopian Eritrean conflict, must be respected without qualification. Both
Ethiopia and Eritrea agreed to accept unequivocally the Eritrea Ethiopia
Boundary Commission’s decision as final and binding. The United States expects
each government to uphold its commitment to abide by this agreement. The United
States urges both parties to implement the Eritrea Ethiopia Boundary
Commission’s decision peacefully, fully and without delay. As the process moves
forward, communication directly between the two countries will be imperative.”
This is a principled stance calling on both countries to adhere to an agreement
that they signed and agreed to abide by its outcome wherever the chips may
fall. Eritrea is fully in compliance with the Algiers Agreement and only in
that sense does the US stance favor Eritrea. Ethiopia is, has been, and remains
the noncompliant/defiant party. The Algiers agreement provides measures to
remedy Ethiopia’s defiance (UN Charter, Chapter VII). But the international
community is and has been reluctant to consider such measures against Ethiopia
because it is ridiculous to sanction a country (Ethiopia) that owes its
sociopolitical and economic existence to the massive and continuous handout of
the international community (Ethiopia is now labeled as “Africa’s perpetual begging bowl”).
Knowing
that, the government in Ethiopia has been getting away with flagrant violations
of the Algiers agreement, outright rejection of court decisions, brazen defiance
of the rule of law, overt violation of multiple UNSC resolutions and more with
impunity simply because Ethiopia won’t accept ‘NO’ for an answer.
And
on 25 Nov 2004 Ethiopia unveiled an “Accept and deceive in principle” that it
dubbed as “5-point peace proposal”, which manifestly constitutes a serious
violation of the Algiers Peace Accord and has the audacity to compel the US and
the UN to support it under the threat of war.
As
the Boston Globe so rightly stated in its editorial of 6 Nov 2003 entitled also
correctly “Recalcitrant Ethiopia”, the international community must learn from
what happened after Eritrea wrested independence 1991 and the outside world let the two
nations sort out their relations. The result was a war that caused not less than
100, 000 of deaths from 1998 to 2000. Now Ethiopia is balking at a settlement
to resolve the immediate cause of the fighting.
Using
colonial maps, an international commission has determined a line between the
two countries, which both had agreed would be final, binding, and without right
for appeal or recourse of any kind. But Ethiopia refuses to allow the boundary
to be demarcated because the town of Badme would end up in Eritrea.
The
international community needs to engage Ethiopia intensely and if necessary
compel it to accept the decision of the Boundary Commission unequivocally as
agreed to by the peace treaty and make sure
they end the conflict.
If
Ethiopia can’t learn on its own to accept ‘NO’ for an answer, then the US, UN
and the international community at large have the obligation to teach Ethiopia to
learn to accept ‘NO’ for an answer the
hardest way because it can’t go on like this for ever.
The
US/UN must let Ethiopia know in no uncertain terms that the world is not
governed by what Ethiopia wants but by that what makes the world tick right and
governs: The rule of law in international relations.
“The
United Nations, the United States, and the European Union all say Ethiopia
should abide by the agreement. Letting the work of the boundary commission go
for naught could allow this conflict to fester into another war and would
represent a dire precedent for border disputes around the world – the Boston
Globe, 6 Nov 2003”.
The
US has spoken a principled ‘No’ to Ethiopia’s fraudulent proposal. Ethiopia
must respect that and accept ‘NO’ for an answer.