It is meeting time for proximity talks in Algiers. With eager support flowing from the international community for a peace plan that is getting cold on the table to take hold, the OAU Chairman will once again engage in a dire attempt to resolve the two-year old border crisis between Ethiopia and Eritrea. Those who have closely followed the event of the crisis unfold hope for nothing but reason and logic to prevail.

The unenviable task of the OAU Chairman is to convince the warring parties to follow logic and reason so that peace might prevail. The OAU will have no problem with Eritrea whose stand for peace has been exemplary so far, filled with flexibility to make concessions as goodwill gesture towards peace. Eritreas policy on the border crisis is based on wisdom that looks beyond today's conflict, an attitude that considers the future coexistence of the peoples of Ethiopia and Eritrea with mutual cooperation towards development of the two nations and the Horn of Africa. Based on such lofty aspirations and wise considerations Eritrea had accepted the OAU Framework for Peace, the Modalities, and the Technical Arrangements. Eritrea has also made it explicitly clear; Ethiopia and the world know it as well, of its standing policy that it will not fire the first shot. The OAU will have no problem convincing Eritrea to employ reason and logic for the sake of peace. Peaceful negotiation and legal settlement is Eritrea's long standing policy towards the border dispute.

However, the OAU Chairman will have to take the Ethiopian leaders to task, challenging every curve and detour they will put on the table as yet another excuse to derail peace. The drought and famine in the Horn of Africa that is said to have put 16 million people under the threat of starvation, the hardest hit being Ethiopia, should weigh heavily in the minds of those who are to participate in the talks, but specially the Ethiopian leaders. The haunting images of Ethiopia's starving children on television screens and front-page newspapers around the world should be a stark reminder to the Ethiopian leaders that despite the massive food aid pouring into Ethiopia, without peace, it will only serve to extend the lives of those who are starving for a short period of time not nurture them to long term prosperity. The Ethiopian leaders should be reminded that their zeal for war is costing the international community much more than what is needed for food aid. The additional burden of building infrastructures, upgrading port capacity, and providing trucks to transport food to hard hit areas is as unwise as it is unnecessary cost in millions of dollars. The Ethiopian leaders should be reminded that it makes no sense at all that they must flex their war muscle at the cost of one million US dollars a day while their people are dying of starvation, disease, and suffering from ignorance and backwardness. They should be reminded that the cost of war, beyond that of material resources, would be a repeat of the three-day Tsorona battlefield carnage, where 10,000 ill-equipped and ill-trained Ethiopian soldiers had perished as minesweepers. The ugliness of war does not register victory but breeds bitter sorrow in the mournful heart of mothers and, nurtures famine and starvation in the bellies of the young. The bravado of war that rides on the waves of false pretense of pride is a costly and futile exercise to resolve a border dispute, because at the end of such an ugly adventure, it is still the map that will settle the disputed territory.

If the Ethiopian Government leaders, as they have always done in the past, make mockery of the earnest effort by the world bodies, and Eritrea's eager willingness to secure peace, then the task of employing reason and logic falls squarely on the shoulders of those who thus far have been shuffling back and forth as mediators to bring peace. It falls on the shoulders of the OAU, UN, EU and the international community, but specially the US to recognize that the poor, starving, famine stricken people of Ethiopia, and the sovereign nation of Eritrea who has been held hostage to the Etiopian Government's terrorizing chock hold must find a resolution. Reason and logic would have it dictate that appeasing the minority led government of Ethiopia has not yielded any fruits so far. Why then prolong the misery of those who have become their victims? Justice must find its way to stand up and speak.

The plight of over 70,000 Ethiopian citizens of Eritrean lineage and Eritreans who resided in Ethiopia, deported and displaced under a cruel ethnic cleansing policy of the TPLF, must scream for justice in the city of Algiers tomorrow. Over 1,500 Eritreans languishing in Ethiopia's concentration camps should prick the conscience of those who mediate for peace; the plight of the Eritrean defense forces who have been entrenched in fox holes at the borders to keep vigil against eminent attack by Ethiopia should be the engaging voice of Eritrea at the proximity talks with their peaceful agenda. The voices of the dead young Eritreans who found no mercy in the hands of the Ethiopian leaders should haunt the memory of those who aspire to bring a peaceful resolution of the conflict. Justice must find its way to stand up and speak.

Let reason and logic burn brightly tomorrow at the proximity talks in Algiers to lend a hand for the just resolution of the conflict. Justice sides with the truth and it betrays none.