Colonel Afwerki Yemane, an Eritrean brigade commander at the Tsorona flank of the Alitiena-Mereb front told reporters Tuesday afternoon that at least 45 Ethiopian tanks were destroyed during the three-day fighting and the Ethiopian army suffered a heavy human losses.

At least 200 bodies of the Ethiopian soldiers could be seen along the half-kilometer trench at Belesa Agrimekel Village, some 80 kilometers south of the capital Asmara.

Afwerki said that the Eritrean troops had only suffered slight casualities because they had "very nice trenches and were technically much better than the Ethiopians."

He did not disclose the losses suffered by the Eritrean side.

He said that the Ethiopian army had used all weapons including Mig- fighters, artillery, tanks and helicopters in the three days fierce fighting which was like that in Badme.

But Ethiopia on Tuesday dismissed Eritrea's claim that it had inflicted heavy losses on Ethiopia as it repulsed an offensive in renewed border fighting between the two Horn of Africa states.

Intro: International mediators trying to end the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea have, so far, failed to come up with a ceasefire. More fighting was reported Tuesday in the horn of Africa, as VOA's East Africa correspondent Scott Stearns reports.

Text: It is the third day of combat on the central Tsorona front, 120 kilometers south of the Eritrean capital, Asmara.

Ethiopia says fighting resumed shortly after dawn Tuesday around the Eritrean-held town of Zalambesa.

Eritrea says it has shot down a fighter jet and destroyed more than 40 Ethiopian tanks since Sunday, repulsing a large-scale offensive. Eritrean radio says Ethiopia is sending thousands of farmers to the front using them as what it calls "cannon fodder."

Ethiopia denies the battlefield losses, saying there is no big offensive, that skirmishes along the border eventually led to full-scale fighting. Ethiopia's government spokeswoman says Eritrea's claims of huge successes on the Tsorona front are similar to boasts made less than three weeks ago about fighting around the town of Badame.

Eritrea ended-up losing that battle. President Isayas Afeworki then accepted an "Organization of African Unity" plan to arbitrate the border dispute.

Since accepting OAU mediation, President Isayas says Ethiopia has been trying to back out of the deal by continuing the fight and coming up with new preconditions to torpedo the peace process. Eritrea says it is ready to pull back its forces at the same time as Ethiopia in keeping with the OAU arrangement.

That deal calls on both sides to demilitarize the border ahead of an international monitoring force for disputed areas. It also calls for a commission to decide the exact location of the border within six months.

Ethiopia says it is Eritrea that is blocking OAU mediation by refusing to withdraw from territories administered by Ethiopia before fighting began last May. If Eritrea is serious about the OAU plan, Ethiopia says president Isayas should prove it by pulling out of contested areas, including Zalambesa. (signed)

Annan briefed the U.N. Security Council Monday on differing interpretations between Ethiopia and Eritrea of an Organization of African Unity (OAU) peace plan, aimed at halting the war over their 600-mile border which flared up again last month.

He will be attending a U.S.-Africa ministerial meeting that begins in Washington Tuesday and will be speaking to Sakim A. Salim, the OAU secretary-general, as well as Albright.

Diplomats said the Security Council, at a closed meeting, requested he asked the OAU to clarify its peace proposals so Ethiopia and Eritrea would not use varying interpretations as an excuse for fighting.

``The council saw no confusion over the OAU agreement and would not stand for the agreement unraveling,'' one envoy at the meeting said.

``Annan was left with a message that he should stress to the OAU the importance of making clear to both parties the meaning of its agreement and not allowing professed different interpretations to be used as the cause of further fighting,'' he said.

Fighting broke out again on Feb 26 after a lull in the warfare that began in May. Eritrea accused Ethiopia Sunday of launching a major offensive, with infantry, tanks, artillery and aircraft, on the central Tsorona front.

In February, Eritrea dropped its earlier opposition to the OAU plan. Ethiopia had previously accepted it after its troops drove Eritrean troops out of the contested border region at the town of Badme that was not clearly demarcated when the Eritrea became independent in 1993.

Eritrea contends the OAU plan calls for a reciprocal demilitarization of the disputed areas while Ethiopia insists Eritrea first has to withdraw from territory it seized summer after the conflict broke out last May.

Ethiopia also says Eritrea must ``bear full responsibility for the loss of lives, the humanitarian crisis and the destruction of property that has resulted from its unbridled aggression.''

U.N. trouble-shooter Mohammed Sahnoun last month, after a round of talks between leaders of both countries, called the border war ``nonsensical and unacceptable.''

In Addis Ababa, the office of Ethiopian government spokeswoman Salome Tadesse earlier issued a communique saying: "Eritrean and Ethiopian defence forces continue to be engaged in fighting at the (central) Zala Anbessa-Egala front," but giving no details.

An Eritrean foreign ministry communique sent to AFP in Nairobi said that the Ethiopian offensive, launched Sunday after two hours of artillery and aerial bombardment Saturday afternoon, was "totally foiled around 9:00 a.m. (0600 GMT)" Tuesday.

"Thousands of (Ethiopian) troops fell like leaves on the battlefront," the communique said.

"It has not yet been possible to give an estimation of the huge human losses that the TPLF (Tigray People's Liberation Front) regime has sustained in the three days of fighting which can better be described as a slaughter.

"In what has become a standard pattern now, the TPLF regime employed human waves for successive assaults with little apparent concern for the massive losses its army continues to sustain."

The communique also charged that Ethiopia had forced about 5,000 villagers to go to the battle zone with ammunition on the backs of pack animals, or on their own backs.

The Eritrean foreign ministry had previously announced that Eritrean forces had shot down an Ethiopian MiG-23 fighter plane and destroyed 19 tanks earlier in the current fighting -- a claim Tadesse dismissed as "a complete lie."

The two sides first went to war last May when Eritrean troops rolled into Badme on the western front, Zala Anbessa on the central front and several other border zones.

The fighting died down after five weeks as diplomatic efforts took over, but resumed on February 6 after they proved fruitless.

An Organisation of African Unity (OAU) peace plan presented last November and accepted then by Ethiopia provides for a ceasefire, demilitarisation of the border, the deployment of peacekeepers and observers, and neutral demarcation of the ill-defined frontier.

Eritrea accepted the plan at the end of February after having baulked at one of its conditions, the withdrawal from the Badme region, before Eritrea's pullout was brought about by force of arms. That fighting left thousands dead, both sides said.

Ethiopia claimed "total victory" at Badme, and Eritrea conceded that its troops had withdrawn from there to establish new defence lines.

Addis Ababa is demanding that Asmara withdraw its forces "unilaterally and unconditionally from remaining Ethiopian territory" before the OAU plan goes into effect.

Eritrea on Saturday dismissed that demand as "ludicrous."

"It is nowhere to be found in the Organisation of African Unity Framework Agreement and they cannot add elements to the plan at this stage," the official ERINA news agency said.

Ethiopia claims that such a retreat is in "the letter and the spirit of the OAU peace plan."

Eritrea said Friday it was willing to withdraw from all contested zones, but only under a general demilitarisation of the frontier as envisaged in the OAU plan, which implies that both sides must pull back.

Eritrea, which bases its position on Italian colonial-era treaties and maps, accuses Ethiopia of sparking the border conflict by occupying part of the Bada region on the eastern front in July 1997 and publishing "an illegal map" the same year which included Eritrean territory in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region.

Ethiopia claims that Eritrea continues to occupy "Ethiopian territory in the regions of Zala Anbesa-Aiga and Egala (central front) and Bada-Burie (eastern front)."

In New York, meanwhile, diplomats said the UN Security Council planned to urge both Ethiopia and Eritrea to adhere to the OAU plan without addressing their divergent interpretations.

In a closed-door meeting on Monday, the Security Council tasked its current president, Qin Huasun of China, with convoking the permanent representatives of the two countries.

British Ambassador Jeremy Greenstock told the council it was the OAU's responsibility to clarify the proposal, a western diplomat said.

UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was planning to intervene to put an end to the border war and to discuss the issue later Tuesday during a US-African ministerial meeting in Washington, the diplomat said.

The two countries have been in conflict for the past 10 months over parts of their common border that were not clearly delineated when Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia in 1993. This time, in addition to the boundary, the two governments are arguing over the peace plan to which each has publicly agreed.

"We have both accepted it, yes," said Ethiopian government spokeswoman Selome Taddesse, of an agreement hammered out by the Organization of African Unity (OAU). "We accepted it back in November, remember? Way back."

Eritrea, for its part, subscribed to the plan only after losing the biggest chunk of contested ground in heavy fighting on Badme plain. The battles left thousands -- perhaps tens of thousands -- dead or wounded.

But the next step was not the cease-fire demanded by the U.N. Security Council. Instead, the combatants have quarreled over details of the agreement that diplomats failed to resolve.

At issue are the smaller areas Eritrean forces continue to hold, including the Zalambessa and Tsorona front, south of the Eritrean capital of Asmara, where fighting resumed Sunday.

The peace plan calls for both sides to withdraw their forces from all contested areas, for independent observers to take the field and for technical experts to decide the boundary. However, Ethiopia insists that Eritrea, which triggered the crisis last May by moving forces into the contested area, must pull out first.

The OAU remains ambiguous about the matter. The language of its plan calls for both sides to "demilitarize" the contested areas. But it also "takes note" of Ethiopia's stipulation. Ethiopia considers that validation. Eritrea calls it politeness.

"It's become clear now," said Eritrean spokesman Yemane Gebremeskel. "The Ethiopians are backtracking."

Selome, the Ethiopian spokeswoman, denied that her country harbors a hidden agenda. "We have no interest in any land that's Eritrean," she said. "The sticking point has always been that we insist they pull their forces from our land first."

The two governments did not agree, either, on the intensity of the most recent fighting.

Gebremeskel, Eritrea's spokesman, described it as "very intense," and called it a major offensive involving Ethiopian helicopter gunships, fighter planes, tanks and two infantry divisions. He said Eritrea had destroyed 19 tanks, captured two more and downed an Ethiopian MiG-23 fighter, which he said crashed behind Ethiopian lines.

Ethiopia called the claim "a lie" and described the fighting as only moderate, after denying Sunday that it was going on at all. "Earlier, it was skirmishes," Selome said, adding that the fighting later escalated.

A diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity from the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said Ethiopia was widely assumed to have started the battle, despite having "already paid a huge price in support from the international community" because of its earlier offensives.