From: Biniam Tekle (biniamt@dehai.org)
Date: Sun Aug 16 2009 - 22:26:38 EDT
Page last updated at 22:18 GMT, Sunday, 16 August 2009 23:18 UK
Horn of Africa damages ruling due
By Martin Plaut
BBC Africa editor
An international tribunal is to decide what compensation Ethiopia and
Eritrea should pay each other for damages inflicted in the 1998-2000 border
war.
Monday's decision is the final element in the peace deal that ended the war,
which cost at least 100,000 lives.
The Eritrea-Ethiopia Claims Commission at The Hague will provide the two
nations with the judgement that lawyers have been working on since March
2001.
Exactly what it says will be made public in a few days time.
The decision will bring to a close an internationally supported deal, signed
in Algiers nine years ago, to end hostilities between these two impoverished
neighbours.
The bitter conflict was only brought to a halt with the direct intervention
of former US President Bill Clinton.
Disputed town
The Algiers treaty put UN forces along the disputed border, asked the Red
Cross to supervise the exchange of prisoners and established two
commissions. The first ruled on where the border lay.
That decision, in April 2003, set down that the disputed border town of
Badme, over which the war had been fought, lay in Eritrea.
It is a ruling Ethiopia has refused to accept, insisting that there should
be further talks on the subject.
Now the Claims Commission is ready to rule on financial compensation.
The fighting along the border inflicted terrible damage on villages in the
area.
At the same time Ethiopia lost goods it owned in Eritrean ports, while it
seized Eritrean firms on Ethiopian soil.
It is issues like these that the commission has assessed.
Its ruling brings to an end one of the most complex attempts by the
international community to end a Third World dispute.
But despite the best efforts of all concerned, it has failed to bring peace
to the two countries.
The border is closed, Ethiopian troops remain on Eritrean soil and their
mutual antagonism is played out in conflicts across the region.
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