Eritrea, 2007

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.