Tensions between Eritrea, Ethiopia on the rise (Twincities)

ETHIOPIA-ERITREA BORDER - Badme doesn't look like the most dangerous town in Africa.

Marooned at the end of 20 miles of dirt road, the tiny frontier outpost consists of a knot of rock huts, some jaywalking goats and one communal pingpong table. Not the sort of place, one would imagine, that once inspired 70,000 men to die in battle. Or still destabilizes a chunk of territory inhabited by 90 million people. Or gives U.S. policymakers in Africa the jitters.

Yet remote little Badme, the flash point of a brutal territorial conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea in the late 1990s, is responsible for all of these woes. And, today, experts worry that the contested town, which is claimed by both countries but controlled by Ethiopia, may be poised to spark even worse trouble ahead - namely, Africa's next major war.

While the U.S. military is focusing much of its attention in Africa on anti-terror efforts in places like Somalia, old hostilities between Ethiopia and Eritrea appear to be heating up on an arid plateau a few hundred miles to the north, with potentially devastating consequences for the people of Africa's Horn. Archenemies Ethiopia and Eritrea insist that renewed fighting along their desolate 620-mile-long common border is not imminent.

But diplomats, security experts and U.N. officials warn that recent saber-rattling by the two nations' leaders, beefed-up troop deployments along their heavily fortified border and even the timing of the U.S. presidential ..more..