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Commission delays marking Ethiopia-Eritrea border
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (Reuters) -- An independent boundary commission, locked in a dispute with Ethiopia over its ruling on a new border with Eritrea, said on Thursday it would not be able to start defining the new frontier as scheduled this month. Ethiopia has repeatedly attacked the Hague-based Ethiopia Eritrea Boundary Commission's (EEBC) decision on a new border, which it drew up under a peace deal to end the two neighbours 1998-2000 border war. "Under the current circumstances, the EEBC is unable to proceed with activities as envisaged in the July schedule of the order of activities ahead," the commission said in a statement released in Addis Ababa through the United Nations Mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea. "But (it) is ready and willing to proceed as soon as conditions permit," the statement said. Contractors had been due to start hammering in pillars to physically demarcate the 1,000-km (600 mile) boundary this month, following earlier postponements, but diplomats say the work is unlikely to go ahead this year. Ethiopia issued its latest broadside against the commission on October 16 when the foreign minister wrote a letter to U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan saying that the commission had ceased to exist as a neutral body. Ethiopia was particularly angered by the commission's decision to award Eritrea the town of Badme, a dusty border settlement of several thousand which has served as the flashpoint at the start of the war in which 70,000 people died. Ethiopia has appealed to the U.N. Security Council to help resolve the dispute by setting up a new mechanism to resolve the disputed frontier, but its request was rejected. Eritrea called last month for the international community to impose sanctions on Ethiopia for its objections to the new boundary, warning that Ethiopian "lawlessness" could lead to "the disastrous war" it accused its neighbour of threatening. Copyright 2003 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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