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Zimbabwean President Asked to Mediate Dispute

Addis Tribune (Addis Ababa)
NEWS
July 2, 2004
Posted to the web July 2, 2004

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe on Friday received Eritrean President
Issaias Afewerki's special envoy, who delivered a message requesting him to
intervene in resolving a long-standing border dispute between Eritrea and
Ethiopia, Xinhuanet reports.
Speaking to reporters after delivering the message, Eritrean Energy and Mines
Minister Tesfai Gebreselassie said that his country wanted Mugabe to exert his
influence on the African Union (AU) to take action against Ethiopia for
reneging on the verdict of a United Nations Commission established to resolve
the dispute.
Territorial disputes between the two Horn of Africa neighbors led to a war in
1998. The Zimbabwean president was part of the high level delegation mandated
by the AU to see to a peaceful resolution of the dispute soon after it erupted
in 1998.
After two years of bitter fighting that left thousands of soldiers from both
sides dead, a peace agreement was reached in December 2000.
Under the agreement, the parties agreed that a neutral Boundary Commission be
established with a mandate to delimit and demarcate the boundary that divides
the two countries.
A former Italian colony, Eritrea was occupied by the British in 1941. In 1952,
the United Nations resolved to establish it as an autonomous entity federated
with Ethiopia. It split with Ethiopia in 1993
A United Nations peacekeeping force patrols a 25 km wide buffer zone along the
unmarked 1,000 km border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Demarcation of the
disputed border was indefinitely postponed after Ethiopia refused to back off.
Eritrea has called for sanctions to force Ethiopia to accept the ruling, which
was supposed to be "final and binding" under the terms of a peace deal

   

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