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News Analysis: Peace Accord, First Step Towards Ethiopia-Eritrea Reconciliation
Top leaders of Ethiopia and Eritrea, deeply involved in a two-year bloody border war since May 1998, signed at last a peace agreement in Algiers, Algeria, with the presence of international leaders.
"It is a positive story for Africa which ends the year (2000) with a story of peace," United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan hailed. When Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki exchanged the document at the signing ceremony and shook hands in a glimpse of smile, the peoples of the world, especially the peoples of the signatories, have the reason to be glad to see the scene of peace which was absolutely impossible six months ago.
The peace package is apparently the result of long, slow negotiations involving, in addition to Ethiopia and Eritrea, the Organization of African Unity (OAU), the United Nations, the United States and the European Union.
Under the accord, Ethiopia and Eritrea will continue their ceasefire and sustained restraint on military confrontations that have been implemented along the 1,000-km common border since June 18 this year. They will release and repatriate all prisoners of war and all other persons detained as result of the armed conflict.
More importantly, the two countries have agreed to the delimitation and demarcation of border on the basis of pertinent colonial treaties and applicable international law, and to set up a claims commission to decide all the claims for loss, damage or injury by the one government against the other.
However, will the comprehensive peace accord do everything to reverse the hostile relations that prevailed in the two Horn of African countries in the past two years?
The responses to the question from either the Ethiopian government or political analysts in Addis Ababa are unfortunately not as optimistic as the people outside the war expect.
Firstly, Meles, who once fought shoulder to shoulder with Isaias to overthrow the military dictator Mengistur Haile-Mariam in 1991, has unequivocally ruled out the possibility of normalizing relations with Eritrea even if the OAU-brokered peace accord is signed.
Meles said on state television last Friday night that while peace may have been achieved, reconciliation between Ethiopia and Eritrea is still some way off.
"Normalization of relations is normal upon signing of peace treaties, but a relation of good neighborliness is unbelievable and not foreseeable with the incumbent government in Eritrea," Meles said, charging the Isaias government is not to be trusted from past experience of "respecting internationally accepted norms ".
Previously, the premier also predicted that a resumption of good relations with Eritrea, which was a province of Ethiopia before 1993, would be difficult as long as Isaias remained in power.
Secondly, local observers believed that the sharp contradictions between Ethiopia and Eritrea that led to the outbreak of border conflict are by no means limited to border disputes, but have also stretched to bilateral economic and commercial fields, which can not be expected to be solved one day in one document.
Based on all these facts, the observers said it was hard for either of the two signatories to resume automatically previous national reconciliation if they stop simply at the signing of the peace package.
However, "Well begun is half done." Many residents in Addis Ababa said that the commitments made by Meles and Isaias at the signing ceremony of the peace agreement have after all paved the way for solving all the existing problems between the two countries peacefully.
They believe that it will definitely take some time before the relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea really return normal, but they also indicated that the normalization of bilateral ties is surely "better late than never".
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