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ETHIOPIA, ERITREA UNDER PRESSURES BY WITNESSES ON PEACE DEAL February 24, 2006
Apunyu Bonny
(SomaliNet) African countries are under pressures by the witnesses of a 2000 agreement ending a border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea to end an impasse and fully implement the deal, diplomats revealed Thursday 23.
In a statement adopted at an unpublicized meeting at U.N. headquarters on Wednesday, the witnesses pressed the Horn of Africa neighbors to accept a binding ruling on their shared border and end all restrictions on U.N. peacekeepers, the diplomats said.
Diplomats from Algeria, Britain, the Congo Republic, the European Union, the Netherlands, Norway and the United Nations as well as the United States attended the closed-door session convened by Washington,
The U.N. Security Council has asked the United States to try to resolve the border dispute and gave it until March 10 to do so. Jendayi Frazer, the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, traveled to the region in mid-January but has not made much headway. The U.S. diplomatic initiative appears to be the main hope of resolving the issue.