Press Release

Just one week prior to the Eritrea/Ethiopia Boundary Commission's meeting to consider the modalities for demarcation, Ethiopia has filed a twenty-one page memorandum demanding that the Commission reconsider and "correct" the April 13 boundary delimitation Award. Ethiopia's memorandum demands, among other things, that the Commission redraw the boundary to give Ethiopia sovereignty over towns on the Eritrean side of the line whenever Ethiopia can come up with evidence of Ethiopian "administration." It also demands that the Commission reconsider, to Ethiopia's advantage, the location of geographical features that Ethiopia argues that were mistakenly identified in the Award. Ethiopian insists, in addition, that its representatives have a right to be present and to participate in all Commission decision making.

This demand that the Boundary Commission reconsider and "correct" important portions of its Award follows a month of Ethiopian military and diplomatic intimidation. Starting a week after the announcement of the Award, Ethiopia refused UNMEE access to Eritrean territory occupied by Ethiopian military, threatened to shoot down the Boundary Commission's aerial survey plane, and demanded that the UNMEE Force Commander be fired. Ethiopia has now reopened UNMEE access into the area "provisionally" but threatens that it can close the area, again, whenever it wants to.

It will be recalled that following the announcement of the Award on April 13, the Ethiopian Council of Ministers immediately declared that the Award gave it "100% victory." Ethiopian government officials and lawyers boasted in published interviews that they had successfully demanded territory that they knew ought to go to Eritrea, by lying to the Boundary Commission and by hiding their exaggerated demands under the cover of court-ordered confidentiality. Ethiopia is following a pattern familiar from its negotiations of the Framework Agreement, the Modalities of Implementation, and the two Algiers peace treaties: claiming that it accepts the solution set forth by neutral third parties, and then immediately setting out to undermine and violate it.

The language of the Algiers Agreements is very clear: the Boundary Commission's Award is "final and binding." Any tampering with the Award of April 13 threatens to unravel the entire process established by those Agreements.

Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Asmara, 18 May 2002