ASMARA, 17 January 2008 — Eritrea has accepted a “virtual demarcation” of its border with Ethiopia and wants Addis Ababa to remove its troops from Eritrean soil, a statement published yesterday said. The two nations have been deadlocked over a 1,000-km border since a 2002 decision by an independent boundary commission gave the flashpoint town of Badme to Eritrea.
The Hague-based commission — set up by a peace deal ending the 1998-2000 war — “virtually” demarcated the border late last year based on the 2002 decision after the two sides failed to come to an agreement on their shared frontier. “Now after five years of revolving around the basic problem, the matter has finally been resolved through a virtual demarcation of the border,” said a statement in the English-language Eritrea Profile newspaper.
Ethiopian officials declined to comment. No territory has changed hands since the demarcation and thousands of troops still face each other along the common border.
In the statement, Eritrea said it would pursue legal measures to evict Ethiopian soldiers from territory awarded to Asmara by the 2002 ruling. “However, if legal proceedings do not result in the appropriate outcome, then the Eritrean people have other internationally approved choices,” the bi-weekly, government-owned paper said, without describing what those options were.
Meanwhile, in Addis Ababa, an Ethiopian opposition party, whose leaders had been charged with treason, has lost the right to use its name after the country’s election board decided on Wednesday to give the title to a splinter group. “A political party led by Ayele Chameso is the sole owner of the Coalition for Unity and Democracy (CUD),” the National Ethiopian Election Board said in a statement.
In July, Prime Minister Meles Zenawi pardoned 37 CUD leaders after spending almost two years in a maximum security prison during a treason trial that ended in a conviction. They had been arrested on charges of inciting their followers to riot after disputed elections in 2005 sparked two bouts of unrest in which 199 people were killed, 800 wounded and 30,000 arrested.
They are now divided into several groups and accuse each other of violating party rules. “The former opposition leaders came under the CUD umbrella to challenge the dominant ruling party in the 2005 election,” said one analyst who declined to be named.
