08:18 a.m. Jul 31, 1998 Eastern
ADDIS ABABA, July 31 (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of women staged rallies across Ethiopia on Friday in support of a peace plan aimed at ending a violent border dispute with Eritrea.
Witnesses saw tens of thousands of women waving the Ethiopian tricolour flag of green, yellow and red at Maskale Square in the capital Addis Ababa for the rally.
City authorities said over 500,000 people marched in the capital, while the Ethiopian News Agency reported huge gatherings across the country. It was not possible to confirm the figures.
Accompanied by drums and singing patriotic songs, the placard-waving women called on the Eritrean government to accept an Organisation of African Unity (OAU)-backed peace plan which calls for Eritrean forces to withdraw from border territory claimed by both sides.
Eritrea says it wants to negotiate the border demarcation before withdrawing.
Ethiopia and Eritrea had argued for years over their common border until the dispute turned violent on May 6 with each accusing the other of invading.
An OAU team is due on Saturday to present a preliminary report on the conflict and is expected to comment on where the borders lay and who administered the territory before the dispute began.
The report will be presented in Burkina Faso, where the team has been operating from instead of its usual Addis Ababa headquarters.