ERITREA AND THE EECC FINAL AWARD

C O N F I D E N T I A L ASMARA 000292


E.O. 12958: DECL: 08/21/2019
TAGS: PBTS PREL ER ET
SUBJECT: ERITREA AND THE EECC FINAL AWARD

Classified By: Ambassador Ronald K. McMullen for reason 1.4 (d)


1. (SBU) GSE DISAPPOINTED: The Government of Eritrea (GSE)
is sorely disappointed at "losing" the Eritrea-Ethiopia
Claims Commission (EECC) Final Award for Damages Claims
arising from the 1998-2000 Border War. On August 17 the EECC
awarded Eritrea and its citizens a total of $163,521,865 for
damages caused by Ethiopia's illegal actions during the war.
This amounts to just 2.7% of Eritrea's claim of some $6
billion. Moreover, as the EECC awarded Ethiopia $174 million
(out of over $14 billion claimed) for Eritrea's illegal
actions, Eritrea owes Ethiopia a net of about $10 million.


2. (C) ERITREA EXPECTED TO WIN $450 MILLION: A member of the
Eritrean legal team revealed that the GSE expected to win a
net $400 to $500 million. The awards were given in two
groups, for Home Front damages and War Front damages. The
Home Front claims tallied losses suffered by the tens of
thousands of civilians expelled from the two countries during
the war. Eritrea reckoned that because Eritreans expelled
from Ethiopia were largely professionals and most Ethiopians
chucked out of Eritrea were laborers, Eritrea would be
awarded more in damages, because the Eritrean expellees were
richer and lost more. The GSE further calculated that
because most of the severe fighting in 2000 occurred on
Eritrean territory ("systematically plundered by Ethiopia,"
GSE officials claim),Eritrea suffered more, and thus would
be awarded more. The GSE was wrong on both counts.

--Undocumented claims and grossly exaggerated damages were
commonplace in Eritrea's (and probably Ethiopia's) claims.
For example, Eritrea claimed its ambassador in Addis Ababa
lost private art supposedly worth $95,000 when Ethiopians
sacked his residence, yet did not provide any receipts or
insurance inventories to substantiate this claim. Eritrea
also sought punitive damages of $1 million for the
"premeditated" nature of the looting of the residence. The
Commission awarded Eritrea $2 million in damages for
Ethiopia's failure to prevent the rape "of persons known and
unknown." Ethiopia received a parallel award of the same
amount.


3. (C) ERITREA GRIMLY ACCEPTS THE RULING: On August 18 the
GSE announced that it "accepts the Award of the Claims
Commission without any equivocation due to its final and
binding nature under the Algiers Agreement." The last bit of
that sentence is a clear reference to the "final and binding"
nature of the Eritrea-Ethiopia Boundary Commission (EEBC)
that in 2002 awarded Eritrea the disputed town of Badme,
which Ethiopia still occupies. The deputy foreign minister
told the ambassador August 20 that top Eritrean officials are
seething and feeling self-righteously victimized by the
international community. He said Eritrea has kept its word,
win or lose, on international arbitration of the Hanish
Islands (lost),the EEBC (won),and the EECC (lost),but
Ethiopia has avoided international censure for its failure to
comply with the EEBC ruling. "Does might make right?" he
wondered. The ambassador asked if Eritrea would pay Ethiopia
the $10 million. The (uncharacteristically) polite Eritrean
official forced a smile and said, "We'll see." He may have
been thinking, "We'll hand the check to the last Ethiopian
soldier stepping back over the EEBC demarcation line."


MCMULLEN