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Ethiopia And Eritrea Sign Peace Deal
CAIRO (IslamOnline) - Ethiopia and Eritrea on Tuesday signed a peace deal in Algeria ending their intractable conflict over a disputed border area, news agencies reported.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Melez Zenawi and Eritrea President Isais Afwerki reportedly signed the accord in the Algerian capital. The signing was attended by United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan and United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
The peace agreement calls for the U.N. to assign some 4,000 peacekeepers to man the 620-mile Ethiopian-Eritrean border, and an exchange of prisoners.
No indications were given concerning when UN troops would start their operation, or when the borders would be demarcated. Annan, however, said that he did not expect U.N. peacekeepers to be stationed in the Horn of Africa for more than a year.
Despite international applause for the accord, Annan was cautions as he warned against a relapse of violence between the two neighbors.
“It is not enough to silence the guns. As we embrace peace, build trust and work for reconciliation, we must remember that words can inflame or soothe,” he said. “We need the best possible atmosphere for implementation of this agreement.”
The U.S., the U.N. and the Organization for African Unity (OAU), presently chaired by Algeria, made the accord possible through extensive efforts. Algerian President Abdulaziz Bouteflika was OAU chairman and the main mediator between the two sides when a ceasefire agreement was reached in June.
The exact details of how the war started in May 1998 remain unclear. After gaining independence from Ethiopia in 1993, Eritrea eventually introduced its own currency. Attempts to regulate cross border trade with Ethiopia led to a disagreement over where the frontier lay in the western region of Badme.
A border skirmish rapidly escalated into a full-scale battle and fighting spread to three fronts. The Eritreans initially gained the upper hand, capturing a chunk of disputed territory around Badme and other pockets along the border. But Ethiopian forces routed the Eritreans from Badme a year later.
In early advances, the Eritreans occupied the Ethiopian-administered Badme for a short while. In June 1998, Eritrea gave a further bow to Ethiopia by occupying the border town of Zalambessa.
Shortly thereafter, Ethiopia accepted a peace plan drawn up by the United States and Rwanda which required Eritrea to withdraw to its positions prior to May 6th. Eritrea, however, did not follow through on the peace plan and after a series of air raids on military and civilian targets on both countries, both sides agreed to a moratorium on air raids.
In November 1998, Ethiopia accepted an OAU peace plan but Eritrea objected to certain elements of the plan. Fresh fighting erupted again in Badme in February 1999 and spread once again to all three fronts. This time, Ethiopia started to regain territory lost in previous battles. Ethiopia recaptured Badme after days of World War One-style trench warfare with the loss of thousands of lives.
Seeking to halt the Ethiopian advance, Eritrea accepted the OAU peace plan, but Ethiopia dismissed this as an Eritrean "trick". In May 2000, Eritrea announced it would pull back from the territories it seized at the outbreak of the war after Ethiopia's advance displaced hundreds of thousands of civilians.
A few days later, Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi declared that the border war was over, but fighting continued for ten days with Ethiopian forces still well inside Eritrea.
The two countries then signed a peace agreement brokered by the OAU in Algiers. It called for an immediate ceasefire and the deployment of a U.N. peacekeeping force in a 15-mile buffer zone until the border was demarcated.
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