19 March 2008
Addis Abeba — Ethiopia is determined to solve its border dispute with Eritrea peacefully, foreign Minister Seyoum Mesfin said Tuesday, a news agency reported from Pretoria.
According to the report, Seyoum was speaking at a press conference after he meeting his South African counterpart Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma in Pretoria.
"We will continue to exert all our efforts to settle the dispute with Eritrea by peaceful means," AFP quoted the foreign minister as saying.
"We have learnt the hard way that disputes, be they over borders or other issues, between states cannot be resolved by war and conflict," the minister observed adding, the only way was by peaceful, diplomatic means.
Seyoum's remarks came as United Nation Mission for Ethiopia and Eritrea (UNMEE) Personnel were forced out of the buffer zone they were deployed to monitor, by the reculcitrant Asmara government.
Ethiopia and Eritrea remain deadlocked in a border standoff following their 1998-2000 war that left 70,000 people dead.
An estimated 200,000 troops from both sides are deployed along the border, fuelling international fears of a new flare-up.
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Dear Editor, The Ethiopian foreign minister must have never known of the very simple logic that "action speaks louder than words". As for Eritreans, they can't be fooled by an Ethiopian wolf in sheep skin, blubbering something about peace, while waging 50 years of war, death and destruction against Eritreans. After all, it has been said, "those who fail to remember history are condemned to repeat it". I would say the Ethiopians foreign minister must have missed that part of common sense too. It's great comic, that some politicians still think they can fool all the people all of… [Read Full Text]
Ethiopia: IOM Assists Grenade Attack Victims Back Home The Daily Monitor (Addis Ababa) 16 March 2008 Biruk Girma Addis Ababa The International Organization for Migrants (IOM) on Wednsday said it brought home 33 Ethiopians who were victims of a grenade attack in Somalia's port town of Bossasso in early February as well as their close relatives. The organization 21 of the 33 suffered mainly from bone fractures or limb amputations and in need of urgent hospitalization. The returnees, all men except for one woman, are from southwestern and northern part of Ethiopia. The attack on 6 February killed 22 people… [Read Full Text]