Envoys cautious after Horn tour

The ceasefire has held for over a year

By Elizabeth Blunt Travelling with the UN team

As an international boundary commission prepares to adjudicate the border dispute between Ethiopia and Eritrea, a United Nations panel has published a cautious report on its visit to both countries.

Representatives from all 15 members of the Security Council said the two governments would accept the commission's decision but phrased their promises very carefully.

The report said President Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea and Prime Minister Meles Zenawi of Ethiopia would accept a "just, judicially-based decision in accordance with colonial treaties".

The decision from the border commission is due to be published by the end of March, and everyone wants to know whether the two governments will accept it as final.

The security council's report is reticent about what the two leaders said - perhaps because their response was too ambiguous to be totally satisfactory.

Conflicting messages

To outward appearances the UN delegation was more warmly received in Eritrea than in Ethiopia.

The officials involved with the visit were at higher level, and local people were encouraged to come out and cheer them.

When they met President Isaias Afwerki, he was waiting at the venue to greet each of them with a personal handshake.

President Afewerki says he will accept the ruling

In Addis Ababa they arrived first and waited for the prime minister until he finally came striding in, surrounded by aides and bodyguards and looking very severe.

Yet a participant in both meetings said later that this did not reflect the mood behind closed doors.

President Afwerki read them a prepared statement of the Eritrean position, after which the meeting was brought quickly to a close.

But the meeting with the Ethiopian Prime Minister, Meles Zenawi, went on much longer, and enabled them to have a real dialogue over a number of important issues.

Yet even Ethiopia sent conflicting messages.

While the prime minister himself was positive about the boundary commission result, the government arranged for the UN party to make a breakfast stop the following day in the northern town of Axum.

Boundary posts

There they had to listen to a prepared speech from a senior figure in the border region about how Ethiopians would never accept an unjust decision or one based on appeasement and compromise.

Faced with this continuing uncertainty, the Security Council members have opted to accept the leaders' assurances at face value, and to assume that the boundary commission's decision will be accepted.

Casualties were high during the border conflict

Most of their final report is concerned with what will happen after that, when the decision has to be implemented.

Above all, the report strives to disabuse anyone of the notion that the announcement marks the end of the peace process, that the following day the UN peacekeeping force will pack up and go home, and that troops and civilians from the two sides can come surging into the areas awarded them by the boundary commission.

The report emphasises that any transfer of territory or civil authority should take place in an orderly manner and urges both governments to refrain from taking any unilateral action.

In fact, the UN operation in the region is due to continue until the border is established on the ground, and marked with boundary posts.

Delay concerns

This will certainly take some time, since detailed maps and plans will have to be drawn up using satellite photography, and satellite imaging is difficult in the rainy season.

Some parts of the border zone are also heavily mined, and demining will have to take place before the demarcation teams can mark those parts of the border.

Throughout this process the border security zone, separating the two forces and patrolled by UN peacekeepers will remain in place.

One thing which clearly is worrying the security council is the possibility that the process may take so long that one or both parties will get impatient and try to take the law into their own hands.

The security council's final report recommends that once the boundary decision is announced, the commission should proceed with mapping and demining straight away, and start marking those parts of the border where there are no mines to delay the process.