If the minority government has its way it would gut the Technical Arrangements through a series of killer amendments, so as to kill the OAU peace package entirely. It cannot be lost on the OAU and its partners that the Ethiopian government's endless requests for clarifications upon clarifications are intended to delay the process, to exhaust the mediators, then at an appropriate time to launch an attack on Eritrea. Now that the final leg of the meaningless shuttle diplomacy is out of the way with no adverse consequences because of Ethiopia's intransigence, Ethiopia's generals could reactivate their plan to attack Eritrea. Initially the plan was meant to be operational around mid February but was postponed because of the Ouyahiya and Lake visits to Addis Ababa and Asmara. One has to assume that the mediators knew Ethiopia has been ready for a while to attack and that they were simply doing their best to appease Ethiopia not to proceed.

Appeasement will not work. The idea that the Technical Arrangements could be "amended" to suit Ethiopia is a recipe for a continuation of the war well into the next generation and beyond, perhaps into Africa's first Hundred Year war. Eritrea has made all the procedural concessions it could make to help preserve the OAU Peace package. Ethiopia has done everything possible to gut the package. Right from the start when the OAU's partners wanted one side to concede to move the process, they always came to Eritrea. Thinking that it would be the last concessions it would be asked to make, Eritrea complied. Unfortunately, the more it complied, the more it has been asked to make additional concessions.

The collapse of Tony Lake's shuttle diplomacy illustrates what happens when you change rules of the game to satisfy the demands of one side while keeping the other side in total darkness. When you accept amendments to an un-amendable package, then you try to sneak in the amendments as minor cosmetic changes, but in reality the amendments have the cumulative effect of gutting the entire peace package, you will soon compromise your most important asset-neutrality.

Diplomacy cannot be any different from other human endeavors. Promises made, must be promises kept. Eritrea was promised that if Ethiopia rejected the Technical Arrangements, and that's exactly what it has done, then international pressure would exert on Ethiopia to comply. But where is the pressure? Instead of pressure, what we see is appeasement. If the OAU's partners thought one more act of appeasement could eliminate the eventuality of war, they have made a fatal error. What they have done, instead, is to accelerate the certainty of war.

If the Technical Arrangements were presented as unalterable documents then they must remain so unless both sides are given equal opportunity to suggest amendments. The process cannot remain closed to one side, and open to the other. The understanding was both sides would be treated equally and impartially. This was the promise Eritrea had in mind when it accepted the Arrangements even though the document contained features it did not care for, and if Eritrea had the opportunity would request their revision.

During the past six months since Eritrea accepted the Technical Arrangements, Ethiopia had been allowed to stall for time while it prepared for war. According to Prime Minister Meles, a few months ago, Ethiopia had submitted 14 pages of request for clarifications. These were on top of clarifications on 39 items requested earlier. Leaving aside the unfairness of giving one side an opportunity to delay the process through interminable requests for clarifications, it was unconscionable that Eritrea was completely in the dark what the 14 pages of clarifications were.

Eritrea was not given an opportunity to study the clarifications and the answers the OAU gave to the clarifications. This is an important point because the clarifications and the answers they generated were the substance of the latest amendments Eritrea was presented with for the first time, in the latest shuttle diplomacy the last days of February. Eritrea was asked to respond to Ethiopia's request that took months to prepare, without giving Eritrea a commensurate opportunity to present its request for amendments to the Technical Arrangements.

Red flags should have gone up when Ethiopia refused to identify the areas it wanted Eritrea to withdraw from. If Ethiopia accused Eritrea of invading Ethiopian "territory" would it not make sense for the OAU and its partners to ask Ethiopia to identify those areas? And when it refused to do so, why was it difficult not to see that Ethiopia was not serious about settling the conflict peacefully? The cumbersome arrangement the OAU devised for the exchange of lists was supposed to facilitate redeployment of forces, but if the extent of the redeployment were subject to Ethiopian veto the entire package would be null and void. Does anyone in his right mind believe that Ethiopia would not exercise the veto unless the disputed areas have been redefined as Ethiopian sovereign territory, especially when redeployment is supposed to precede demarcation? Ethiopia could accept on paper demarcation on the basis of colonial borders, as long as it reserves the right to decide which areas are subject to demarcation.

It is hard to escape the conclusion that the OAU and especially its partners were obsessed with what might be acceptable to Ethiopia. But how could they not know that nothing short of the redefinition of the disputed areas, as sovereign Ethiopian territory would satisfy Ethiopia? The question has been the same throughout the conflict-Does the OAU Charter apply to Ethiopia? The answer is categorically, YES. But the relevant question is whether Ethiopia believes this is the case. The answer is, NO. The amendments Ethiopia is trying to force on the OAU package shows that Ethiopia believes the Charter is irrelevant.

The amendments Ethiopia is seeking will never; never allow demarcation of the disputed areas on the basis of colonial borders. If you allow Ethiopia to redefine the disputed areas as sovereign Ethiopian territories you are killing the peace package. No amount of international guarantees will satisfy Eritrea that Ethiopia can be compelled to vacate areas it has been allowed to redefine as its sovereign territory.

Since its rejection of the Technical Arrangement, Ethiopia has initiated a campaign of obfuscation, denying that the process had collapsed. It denied that the OAU Chairman, on a "take-it-or-leave-it" basis, presented the Technical Arrangement to the two governments. But in doing so, the Ethiopian government came close to saying that Prime Minister Meles did not speak for the Ethiopian government in his earlier communication with the current OAU Chairman although the Prime Minister had agreed that the Arrangements were not amendable. This is what the August 1999 Clarification of the OAU said:

"The OAU salutes the understanding reached by the Personal envoy of the current Chairman with His Excellency the President of the State of Eritrea and His Excellency the Prime Minister of the Federal Republic of Ethiopia, respectively, that the document containing the Technical Arrangements is not open to amendment."

But after agreeing to the non-amendable nature of the Arrangements in August 1999, by March 2000, the Ethiopian government had changed its mind:

"Ethiopia was and is of the opinion that the implementation plan, which has been termed Technical Arrangements, should be worked out through consultation and dialogue. It did not and could not have agreed to a process whereby the implementation plan would be presented on a take-it-or-leave it basis even before meaningful dialogue and negotiation on its contents had been mad."

Ethiopia changed its mind on the Technical Arrangements because it knew once it agreed to accept it; the process would culminate on demarcation on the basis of colonial borders. Thus it was important to introduce killer amendments to gut the process even at the risk of another round of war. What is surprising is not that Ethiopia attempted to drag the process through amendments, but that the OAU and the partners allowed Ethiopia's delaying tactics to go unabated, knowing full well that the Arrangements were not subject to amendments. Furthermore, Ethiopia insists that it had accepted the Framework Agreements and the Modalities, but it has refused to sign the two documents. Unfortunately neither the OAU nor its partners have leaned on Ethiopia to sign the two parts of the peace package. Ethiopia is paying lip service about accepting the OAU peace package, but as of today, nothing in writing. It will not sign the two packages, without endorsing the Technical Arrangements, and it will not sign the Technical Arrangements until it is written in such a way that meaningful demarcation never occurs. It is not only the implementation package that Ethiopia has not agreed to, it has not, as of yet, formally accepted the first two parts of the peace package by signing the documents. It takes two to make peace. Eritrea is ready. Ethiopia is not.

When Eritreans said time and again they want peace, they never said a short-term peace at any price. Tens of thousands of Eritrea from around the world demonstrated for peace February 29. It is possible that the OAU's partners have misread Eritreans' commitment to peace. It is possible that they thought Eritreans would accept any peace, of any hue, to avoid another round of war. Or perhaps they thought they could ramrod an unjust package on the government because of the public's hunger for peace. On matters of war and peace, on matters of defending the land, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the public and the government of Eritrea. Both share an unstinting determination to pursue the war if necessary, if all peaceful avenues are exhausted. that is.

Peace is preferable to war; but, not necessarily at any price. There's no such thing as peace at any price, for in the end what you get is not peace but appeasement; and appeasement leads to subjugation. As anyone who knows anything about Eritrea, will tell you, subjugation is alien to the Eritrean national character. Eritreans don't like to kneel down to anybody. When Ethiopia rejected the Technical Arrangements, and as is the OAU's partners, as is more likely, won't do what they promised to do-to put sufficient pressure on Ethiopia to accept the peace package. Sadly, but surely, because of their inaction, another round of war becomes inevitable. At the expense of the unlucky people of the Horn region, history will repeat itself: appeasement does not work; never did, never will.