ADDIS ABABA, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Ethiopia said on Monday it will attend a meeting next week in The Hague to discuss its disputed border with Eritrea, but said its neighbour had made demarcation of the frontier impossible. Tensions remain high after the two nations fought a 1998-2000 border war that killed 70,000 people, and on Monday a Foreign Ministry spokesman again accused Eritrea of scuppering any lasting deal. "The substantial deployment of Eritrean troops into the demilitarised zone, Eritrea's continued constraints on (U.N. peacekeepers) ... and violations of the cessation of hostilities make conditions for demarcation non-existent," said Wahide Belay. But he said Ethiopia would nonetheless attend the Sept. 6 meeting. Eritrean officials were not immediately available to comment. The two countries signed a peace deal in Algiers in 2000 and agreed to submit to binding arbitration by a claims commission and a boundary commission in The Hague. But the process ground to a halt after Addis Ababa rejected the border as set out by the commission in April 2002 -- in particular the placing of the border village of Badme on Eritrean soil -- while Eritrea refused to consider any changes. Last November, the commission gave Ethiopia and Eritrea a year to demarcate their 620-mile (1,000-km) border. Eritrea said the commission should deal with Ethiopia's rejection of the boundary rather than passing demarcation back to the countries themselves.
