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By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS-ABABA (Reuters) – Ethiopian and Eritrean leaders reopened their border crossings on Tuesday, reinforcing an astonishing reconciliation and giving Addis Ababa a direct route to the Red Sea ports.
Ethiopian and Eritrean forces stationed along the border will be brought back to the camps to ease tensions, said Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
"We announced the new year by demolishing the trenches along our border," Abiy told reporters, citing the fact that the Ethiopian New Year was celebrated on Tuesday.
"To date, the Ethiopian defense forces (along the border with Eritrea) will be gathered in camps and will ease the often extreme tensions, the same will be done on the Eritrean side".
The war that broke out in 1998 over the border and other problems killed about 80,000 people before the end of the fighting in 2000 in a disputed peace agreement.
Tensions have burned on the border's position – until Abby proposes to end the military stalemate this year as part of a package of reforms that reshaped the political landscape in the Horn of Europe. Africa and beyond.
Thousands of people from both countries attended a border-opening ceremony in Zalambessa, an Ethiopian border town reduced to ruins soon after hostilities between neighbors began in 1998.
Soldiers and civilians waving Ethiopian and Eritrean flags lined the road as Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki opened the border at a ceremony broadcast live on Ethiopian television.
"It is the happiest day of my life," Ruta Haddis, an Eritrean from Senafe town, on the other side of the border, told reporters. "I would never have thought it would happen during my lifetime."
The two leaders have opened another border crossing in Bure, said Eritrean Minister of Information, Yemane Meskel, in a tweet.
The crossing of Debay Sima – Bure leads to the port of Assab, at the same time. is from Eritrea, while its port of Massawa is located directly north of the Serha – Zalambessa link.
Ethiopia, a growing economic power of 100 million people, relied almost entirely on neighboring Djibouti for access to the Red Sea since 1998.
ETHIOPIA NEW YEAR
Photos posted online by the Abiy Chief of Staff showed that the leaders were discussing and walking side by side in Bure-Abiy in camouflaged military fatigues and that Isaias was wearing sandals and a safari suit.
Some of the most fierce fighting of the 1998-2000 war took place in the Bure region.
Eritrean and Ethiopian leaders have quickly ended two decades of hostility since the signing of an agreement to re-establish links on 9 July in Asmara.
Eritrea reopened its embassy in Ethiopia in July, Ethiopia last week and the two countries resumed their flights.
The two leaders also celebrated the Ethiopian New Year at the border with their troops on Tuesday, said Abie's chief of staff, Fitsum Arega.
Ethiopia follows a schedule similar to that of former Julian – who began disappearing from the West in the 16th century – which means that the country entered its 2011 year on Tuesday.
(Report by George Obulutsa in Nairobi and Aaron Maasho in Addis Ababa, written by Ingrid Melander, edited by Andrew Heavens and Ed Osmond)
