US and UN diplomats have started talks between Ethiopia and Eritrea in an attempt to break a deadlock over a contested border ruling, a UN spokeswoman said today.
Top officials, who have increased pressure to resolve the dispute, include US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Mr Donald Yamamoto and Mr Martti Ahtisaari, the UN's
special envoy for humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa.
"The engagement of the international community to break the deadlock in the border demarcation between Ethiopia and Eritrea has been intensified in the capitals of the two countries," a spokeswoman for the UN Mission to Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) told a news conference.
Tensions have risen between the Horn of Africa countries who went to war over the disputed 600-mile frontier between 1998-2000. A shooting this month on the border has
underscored growing hostility.
UNMEE's investigation of the incident in which an Eritrean militiaman was killed has provoked criticism by Ethiopia, which accused the mission of implying that Ethiopian armed forces had been involved.
An independent commission had been due to start marking out a new boundary between the two countries this month. But Ethiopia has repeatedly called for the line to be redrawn and
the physical demarcation of the border has been postponed.
Ethiopia is particularly reluctant to accept the Hague-based Boundary Commission's decision to award Eritrea the village of Badme, a dusty town that served as a flashpoint at the start of the war in which 70,000 people died. Eritrea has called Ethiopia's rejection of the ruling "reckless".