Allow me to extend my congratulations to Mr. Srgjan Kerim on his election to
the high office of President of the General Assembly at
its sixty-second session. I would also like to recognize
Sheikha Haya Rashed Al-Khalifa of Bahrain for her
distinguished service as President of the Assembly at
its sixty-first session.
Please allow me also to extend my appreciation to
the Secretary-General, Mr. Ban Ki-moon, for his strong
commitment and unceasing efforts in addressing issues
of peace and security in many parts of the world where
many conflicts and tensions remain unresolved. I wish
to assure him of my Government’s constructive support
and its wholehearted commitment to peace and security
in our region.
This session of the General Assembly provides
Member States with the opportunity to address the
challenges and threats that continue to preoccupy us,
including the lack of peace and security and the
presence of extreme poverty, underdevelopment,
environmental degradation and natural disasters.
In the interest of brevity, let me now revert to
more pressing problems closer to home. For the past
five years, it has, sadly, become almost a ritual for my
Government to urge, from this rostrum, the
international community, and especially the Security
Council, to shoulder their fundamental responsibilities
for the maintenance of peace and security in our part of
the world. The legal principles at stake and the
looming threat to regional peace and stability have
been and remain stark indeed. The hard facts are
neither controversial nor ambiguous.
In flagrant breach of international law, the
Charter of the United Nations and the Algiers Peace
Agreement, Ethiopia continues to occupy sovereign
Eritrean territories through military force. Ethiopia
continues to reject the final and binding decision of the
Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC) and to
obstruct the demarcation of the boundary, to which end
the international community has deployed the United
Nations Mission in Eritrea and Ethiopia (UNMEE) at
an annual running cost about $200 million. Ethiopia
continues to violate with impunity fundamental
principles of international law, including full respect
for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of a fellow
United Nations Member State, the integrity of
international treaties and the norms of settling disputes
through binding arbitration. Those are the indelible
facts on the ground that have been and are spawning a
climate of permanent and escalating tension in our part
of the world.
Throughout these years, the Boundary
Commission has filed no less than 24 reports to the
Security Council underlining the gravity of the
situation. The EEBC has no independent means or
powers of enforcement. The legal authority and powers
of enforcement reside, squarely and explicitly, with the
Security Council, which is the guarantor of the Algiers
Peace Agreement. As such, the United Nations Security
Council should long have taken remedial action, both
in accordance with Article 14 of the Algiers Peace
Agreement as well as on the basis of Article 39 of the
United Nations Charter. But that has not happened to
date. Ethiopia has managed to frustrate the EEBC
decision and the demarcation of the boundary which
should have been completed by 2003 because of the
unwarranted positions of some United Nations Security
Council member States, and especially the United
States of America, which has regrettably chosen to
placate Ethiopia at the expense of international law and
the interests of regional peace and security.
It was against the backdrop of Ethiopia’s defiance
and violation of international law that the Boundary
Commission convened a meeting of the parties in The
Hague early last month. Ethiopia first sought to prevent
the meeting from taking place by raising spurious legal
objections to the original venue New York. And
when that bogus pretext was removed and the meeting
was convened in The Hague, Ethiopia failed to respond
to the five conditions that the Commission had
imposed so that it could proceed and embark on the
time-bound schedule of operations that had been
worked out in order to complete pillar emplacements
along the 1000 kilometre border in the coming months.
The five conditions that Ethiopia was requested to
fulfil were: first, to indicate its unqualified acceptance
of the 2002 Delimitation Decision without requiring
broader ranging negotiations between the parties;
secondly, to lift restrictions on the movement of EEBC
personnel; thirdly, to provide security assurances;
fourthly, to meet payment arrears and fifthly, to allow
free access to pillar locations.
At the Commission’s meeting, Eritrea committed
itself once again to cooperate with the demarcation in
all of the respects regarding which the Commission had
expressed concern. Eritrea’s commitments were made
both in writing and verbally, in front of the
Commission and other participants.
Eritrea asks merely that Ethiopia make the same
commitment to support the demarcation in accordance
with the Commission’s legitimate instructions.
Ethiopia, however, made it clear that it had no
intention of complying with the Commission’s
demarcation instructions and raised tangential issues,
which my delegation has fully addressed in the full text
of my statement.
After the recent Boundary Commission meeting in
early September in The Hague which I mentioned
the text of a letter came to Eritrea’s attention. The letter
had been circulated to the public and the media without
communicating it to the Eritrean Government through
appropriate diplomatic or legal channel. In the letter
the Ethiopian Foreign Minister indicated Ethiopia’s
intention to attempt to renounce the two Algiers
Agreements in accordance with which the Eritrea-
Ethiopia border war of 1998-2000 was brought to an
end.
The substance of Ethiopia’s letter and its timing
underscored the fact that the letter was intended simply
as another effort to subvert the implementation of the
final and binding award of the Eritrea-Ethiopia
Boundary Commission. As such, that effort is clearly
unlawful under the Vienna Convention on the Law of
Treaties and other principles of international law, as
well as highly detrimental to regional peace and
security.
The Vienna Convention does not support
Ethiopia’s effort to deny legal force to the
Commission’s award. Even if Ethiopia’s renunciation
attempts were legally effective which they are
not Article 70 of the Convention states that the
boundary established under the Algiers Agreement
remains binding on both parties.
The Vienna Convention cannot simply be
interpreted to permit the dissatisfied party in a
boundary arbitration to renounce the result
retroactively. Indeed, Ethiopia seems to be planning to
use its unlawful attempt to renounce the Algiers
Agreements in order to renew hostilities. The Algiers
Agreements were designed to put an end once and for
all to the two States’ conflicting claims to territory and
thus to leave the two States free to rebuild their
relationship for the good of both of their peoples.
In the five and one half years since the Boundary
Commission’s delimitation decision, however, Ethiopia
has repeatedly obstructed implementation of the
decision and threatened to walk out on the process
altogether, if it was not given everything that it wanted.
While tens of thousands of Eritreans indigenous to the
Ethiopian-occupied regions wait in internally displaced
persons camps for the chance to peacefully enjoy the
benefits of the final and binding award, Ethiopia is
moving new settlers onto their land, attempting to
make its illegal occupation of Eritrean territory
permanent. That is in breach of the Algiers
Agreements, in particular the Agreement on Cessation
of Hostilities, and Chapter VII of the United Nations
Charter should have been invoked to end Ethiopia’s
flagrant violations with impunity of international law.
Eritrea sincerely hopes that the demarcation
process can be restarted, in accordance with
international law and consistent with the final and
binding delimitation award of 13 April 2002. This is
the central tenet of the Algiers Agreements and the key
to reinstating regional harmony. It is important for
effective action to be taken in the interest of legality
and the maintenance of regional peace and security.
The United Nations and the Security Council have
unequivocal legal and moral responsibilities to ensure
that this occurs without further delay and some Powers
with major interests in the region need to reassess their
policies so that the peoples in the region can live in
peace and harmony.
Ethiopia’s invasion of Somalia has become a
serious concern in our region, and the Security Council
and members of the international community must
insist on the unconditional and immediate withdrawal
of all Ethiopian troops from Somalia in order to end
the occupation.
I do not wish to conclude my statement without
briefly touching on the progress and the challenges that
lie ahead in the peace process in the Sudan. The Sudan
has come a long way in addressing its internal
conflicts, both by concluding peace agreements and by
engaging in the implementation process of the terms
and conditions of the peace accords. Eritrea will
continue to lend its support to the peace process in
Darfur by working closely with all concerned parties
and countries, including the United Nations and the
African Union, in order to achieve a robust peace
package that will bring a lasting solution. In that
regard, Eritrea looks forward to the Tripoli meeting
later this month.