Claims body rules Eritrea started 1998 border war

Wed Dec 21, 2005 9:49 AM ET

By Emma Thomasson

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - An international commission has ruled that

Eritrea violated international law with an attack on Ethiopia in 1998

that triggered a border war, in a decision likely to further stoke

simmering tension between the two sides.

The commission at the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague,

agreed to by both Horn of Africa countries as part of a peace deal in

2000, made a series of decisions this week, relating to claims for

compensation from both sides.

On Wednesday, Ethiopia welcomed the ruling that blamed an attack by

Eritrea on May 12, 1998 on the town of Badme for triggering the war,

but Eritrea noted the commission had also found that Ethiopia had

violated international law.

Military manoeuvres on both sides of the 1,000 km (620 mile)

Ethiopia-Eritrea border in recent months have fueled fears of a repeat

of the 1998-2000 border war which killed 70,000 people.

U.N. peacekeepers were deployed in a buffer zone along the border

after a 2000 peace deal, but Eritrea ordered U.N. soldiers from

Western countries to leave earlier this month.

Eritrea's move was widely viewed as a sign of frustration that the

international community has done too little to force Ethiopia, the

Horn of Africa's dominant power and a key U.S. ally, to implement

demarcation of their common border.

In a peace deal signed in Algiers in 2000, the two countries agreed to

submit to binding arbitration by a claims commission and a boundary

commission in The Hague. But the peace process has stalled since

Ethiopia rejected a decision in 2003 to award the flashpoint border

town of Badme to Eritrea.

COMPENSATION

In documents published on the Web site of the Permanent Court of

Arbitration, the claims commission said Eritrea must compensate

Ethiopia for the attack on Badme that triggered the war. The

commission will decide on damages at a later stage.

"The Commission holds that Eritrea violated ... the Charter of the

United Nations by resorting to armed force to attack and occupy Badme

... and is liable to compensate Ethiopia for the damages caused by

that violation of international law," it said.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration was established in 1899 to settle

international disputes and now has 104 state parties.

Eritrea, wedged between Sudan, Ethiopia and Djibouti on the Red Sea

coast, won independence from Ethiopia in 1993 after a 30-year war to

become Africa's youngest sovereign state.

Ethiopia welcomed the ruling and said it would influence current

efforts to defuse tension along the border.

"This latest decision by the claims commission makes it clear beyond

any doubt that Eritrea has absolutely no ground for claiming the moral

high ground in the conflict," the foreign ministry said in a

statement.

In a statement from its foreign ministry, Eritrea did not comment on

the ruling that its attack had triggered the war, but focused instead

on decisions relating to Ethiopian violations of international law

during the war.

The commission said Ethiopia was liable to Eritrea for allowing its

soldiers to loot and burn buildings and destroy livestock in a number

of towns and villages and for its failure to prevent several incidents

of rape of Eritrean women.

(Additional reporting by Tsegaye Tadesse in Addis Ababa and Andrew

Cawthorne in Nairobi)