Border Commission Ruling Vital for Ethiopia-Eritrea Lasting Peace

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Friday, April 12, 2002

Border Commission Ruling Vital for Ethiopia-Eritrea Lasting Peace

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Only two days left for the final decision of the Ethiopia-Eritrean border delimitation to be declared by the Boundary Commission in the Hague, and the Ethiopian government is facing a new challenge for the lasting peace in the country since some opposition parties have expressed their rejection to accept the final border decision.

The Ethiopian Democratic Party, which is the largest oppositionparty in the country, has accused the ruling party, Ethiopia People's Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF), of neither fully reflecting the interests of the Ethiopian people nor presenting strong evidence enabling Ethiopia to win in the process.

"Since we do not believed the EPRDF could represent us in the arguments, we are organizing peaceful demonstrations objecting both the Algiers peace agreement and the subsequent developments in that line," said an opposition party official.

The party has already collected more than 100,000 petitions from the general public to support its potion, and the control over the Red Sea port of Assab has become the most concern issue for the many Ethiopians since Ethiopia has been a landlocked country with a population of more than 64 million after Eritrea sought independence from its much larger neighbor in 1993

Campaigns by Ethiopian opposition parties calling for the Assabport to be included in the border arbitration, Tsegaye Bekele, deputy director-general of the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry Legal Services Department held that these remarks were the parties personal views and were improper and far from the facts.

The Assab issue was not the cause of the war between the two countries, thus the current case does not include Assab, added Tsegaye.

Both the opposition parties and the ruling party have been airing their respective versions on the possible outcomes of the Hague ruling for sometime now.

The Ethiopian Information Ministry held that seeking a peacefuland lasting solution to the Ethiopia-Eritrean border demarcation based on fundamental principle is the only option on the ground tobring about sustainable economic development in the country.

The ministry also accused some opposition groups of mendacious propaganda in trying to drag the country into another war.

And the people of the country are waiting the ruling with mixedfeelings, and although majority of Ethiopians have come to accept that their country has lost a sizable area of land to Eritrea, they are concerned that it might give up more land as result of the border commission ruling.

Diplomats here held that the governments of both Ethiopia and Eritrea have agreed to abide by the commission's ruling since the two sides have realized that launching war is not the only solution to solve the dispute between the two countries.

The more than two-year border conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, which was described as the most senseless struggle among Africa's many armed conflicts, had claimed tens of thousands of soldiers lives.

However, people still are worrying that what will happen after the border ruling is declared, and there is no guarantee that peace will come as a result unless relations between the tow sidesare normalized.

Earlier, the Ethiopian government declared that the commission's ruling would end all causes for conflict with Eritrea over the border.

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