Horn envoys visit Eritrea

Ethiopia and Eritrea fought for two years over the border

By the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Asmara

Members of the United Nations Security Council are in the Eritrean capital, Asmara, on the last leg of a visit to Ethiopia and Eritrea.

An independent boundary commission is expected to announce a decision soon on the course of the disputed border between the two countries.

A UN peacekeeping force is currently posted in the border region following a bitter war between the two countries in the late 1990s.

The Security Council ambassadors are now embarking on their final round of meetings, including one with the Eritrean President, Isias Afewerki.

They left Addis Ababa saying that they were optimistic, because the Ethiopian leader Meles Zenawi had reaffirmed his promise to accept the boundary commission's decision as final.

But Mr Meles is under considerable popular pressure to stand up for Ethiopia's rights over the border, especially from the people of Tigray, his own home region.

'We shall get what is ours'

As they travelled through Tigray on Saturday on their way to the border, the ambassadors were ambushed by the speaker of the regional assembly.

A ceasefire agreement was reached in June 2000

Under the guise of welcoming them to the historic city of Axum, he put forward a much harder line.

"Our government has produced solid and incontestable evidence. We are confident, if the law of evidence is working, that we shall get all that is ours," he said.

"We shall not accept any decision that attempts to alter reality on the ground in the face of clear, solid evidence.

"Once more we await justice, but will not be bound by any unjust decision that is based on appeasement and compromise."

Ethiopia is a very tightly controlled country.

People here say it is unthinkable that the regional speaker would have made such a contentious speech without having got clearance first, very possibly from the prime minister himself.