Ethiopia can't legally scrap border ruling, says Eritrea

ASMARA - Ethiopia's threat to terminate a pact ending a border war with Eritrea would have no impact on a five-year-old frontier ruling, Asmara's legal advisor said on Wednesday.

Addis Ababa and Asmara have been locked in a bitter row over their shared border, and tensions have heightened this year after a war in Somalia and troop movements along the disputed frontier.

"The most important thing is that nothing Ethiopia does at this point will have any affect on the boundary decision," Eritrea's legal advisor, Lea Brilmayer, told Reuters by telephone from Connecticut.

Ethiopia said last week it may withdraw from the 2000 Algiers Agreement ending a 1998-2000 border war with Eritrea that killed some 70,000 people. The Ethiopian Foreign Ministry argued Asmara's violations would effectively void the pact.

Addis Ababa accused its smaller neighbour of breaching the deal by sending thousands of troops into a demilitarised zone on the Eritrean side of the border.

The pact said both sides would have to abide by an independent 2002 ruling on the border, but Ethiopia rejected the decision after a key town was granted to Eritrea saying it wanted more discussion.

"It has to be made clear to the international community that this is just another attempt to get out of the EEBC ruling," she said, referring to the boundary commission decision.

In November, the commission gave the countries a year to begin physically marking the border, saying it had marked the boundaries on maps and would let them stand if the countries did not finish the job themselves.

But there has been no let-up in tension. This month, Ethiopia said its soldiers were just metres (yards) apart from Eritrean troops who had moved into what is supposed to be a neutral buffer zone.

Analysts and diplomats say neither country wants to go to war, in spite of the inflammatory rhetoric on both sides. But they worry that an unplanned skirmish could trigger conflict.

Brilmayer dismissed claims that Ethiopia could legally renounce the peace deal, accusing Ethiopia of breaching the agreement by refusing to implement the binding border ruling.

"Their attempt at renunciation is not legal. Even if it were legal it would not upset the boundary commission decision especially the one coming up in November," she said.

She said Ethiopia could not complain of alleged violations of the deal when Addis Ababa contravened it since the outset.

"It's clear that Ethiopia doesn't give a hoot about the (demilitarised zone). They're just looking for an excuse to get out of (the border ruling)," she said.