Situated less than 20 kilometres (12 miles) from the front line between the two armies, it was held by Eritrea from May 1998 to last February, before being recaptured by Addis Ababa's forces.

Ammunition and weapons are still lying around, the clinic, the school and the administrative buildings are destroyed, and Eritrean coins can still be found.

Although officially Yirga, the residents all call it Badme, the name it bore 100 years ago and which is still that of the surrounding district. But its exact location is a matter of argument.

The maps drawn up during the Italian colonisation of the 1930s are vague, and the border was not defined precisely when Eritrea became independent of Ethiopia in 1993.

Each side blames the other for the 14-month war, whose roots lie in the loss of Ethiopia's Red Sea ports when Eritrea broke away. They have agreed in principle to a peace plan proposed by the Organization of African Unity, but disagree over its interpretation.

Fighting escalated again at the end of last month despite heavy rains.

Mamouye Legesse, a 49-year-old farmer, fled Badme when the Eritreans captured it then returned when the village changed hands again. He has built a shelter with room for 30 people, including his wife and three children.

"Eritrean shelling can not be ruled out," he said. "My wife and children are a kilometre away, and only come home in the evenings."

Berhane Tsehaye, 32, said residents were returning little by little and trade was starting up again.

Local officials accused the Eritreans of wanting to take over the Badme plain because it was one of the few fertile areas in a mountainous region.

On the former front line, at Gemhalo and Feka Gebre, Ethiopian troops are still in the process of clearing the Eritrean trenches and dugouts of mines and the bodies of enemy soldiers.

Local militia stand guard while farmers pasture their cattle in spite of the mines.

Wrecked military vehicles and thousands of rounds of ammunition litter the area.

The trenches stretch for kilometres (miles), with well-equipped bunkers on several levels capable of holding large numbers of infantry. Ethiopian troops said mounds of earth concealed mass graves, but a smell of putrefaction still hung over the fortifications.

The Ethiopians said the defences were strong and extremely well-built, but failed to resist a mass assault launched on February 23 with aircraft and tanks.

The attackers punched through in four places and had overrun the area within five days, they said.

Tibor B. Nagy Jr., of Texas, is a career member of the Senior Foreign Service, Class of Counselor, and is currently serving as Ambassador to the Republic of Guinea. He served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Lagos, Nigeria from l993 to l995. Prior to Lagos, Ambassador Nagy served as deputy chief of mission in Cameroon (l990-l993) and Togo (l987-l990). His other overseas postings were Ethiopia (l984-l986), Seychelles (l98l-l983), and Zambia (l979-l98l).

His domestic tours include the Executive Seminar on National and International Affairs (l995-l996), Post Management Officer/Systems Administrator in the Bureau of African Affairs (l983-l984), and as a management analyst for the General Services Administration.

He received a B.A. in history and government from Texas Tech University and an M.S.A. in information technology from George Washington University. Ambassador Nagy speaks Hungarian and French.

``It did not work,'' one delegate told Reuters, commenting on pre-summit talks on the Horn of Africa conflict hosted in Tripoli by Gaddafi. Another delegate confirmed that there had been no breakthrough in Tripoli.

Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika sees the 1999 summit of the Organization of African Unity, which begins Monday, as marking the return of Algeria to the international stage following seven years of a bloody Islamist revolt.

The ministers, who wrapped up their deliberations at dawn Saturday, made no recommendations to the heads of state on Ethiopia and Eritrea, ``pending the outcome of the Lusaka and the Tripoli initiatives.'' Daggash said it was too early to tell what had happened in Tripoli.

Algeria's Bouteflika has negotiated a deal with the armed wing of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), whose supporters took up arms after the army scrapped elections it was poised to win in 1992, but the more radical GIA remains at war.

The conflict, a mix of Islamist violence and extra-judicial reprisals, has killed at least 100,000 people. Security for the summit is very tight.

Gaddafi, who like Algeria appears keen to return to the international stage, has played an increasingly active diplomatic role in Africa.

African leaders voted at the 1998 OAU summit in Burkina Faso to breach a U.N. air embargo on flights to Tripoli when they were on official OAU business.

The sanctions, which affected diplomatic and other sectors, were suspended after Libya struck a deal with the United States and Britain on the trial by a Scottish court in the Netherlands of two Libyans accused of the 1988 Lockerbie airliner bombing.

This year, the ministers preparing for the summit called for a total lifting of sanctions on the grounds that Libya had met all the conditions required.

``The Council (of ministers) believes that in order to contribute to the speeding up of a solution to the conflict sanctions should be lifted,'' Daggash said.

Britain has restored diplomatic ties with Libya. The United States has reservations about lifting sanctions.

OAU officials said that around 40 heads of state and government were expected to attend the summit. Egypt's Hosni Mubarak will attend his first summit since 1995, when Islamist gunmen tried to kill him at the meeting in Addis Ababa. At the time, he accused neighbor Sudan of involvement.

Nigeria's newly elected President Olusegun Obasanjo and South Africa's Thabo Mbeki, who is emerging from Nelson Mandela's shadow, were both expected to attend.

Daggash said that Mandela himself, who formally took his leave of the OAU in 1998, may also put in an appearance.

The unresolved border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the uncertain Congolese peace agreement were to top the agenda when the three-day summit of the 52-member Organization of African Unity gets under way Monday.

The fanfare greeted regional leaders as they arrived at Algiers' newly opened Sheraton Hotel, 15 miles outside the capital. The summit will be held in an adjacent conference center.

The foreign ministers adopted an agenda early Sunday leaving discussion of the 13-month war between Ethiopia and Eritrea and the civil war in Congo the heads of state.

Tens of thousands of soldiers and hundreds of civilians have been killed in the Ethiopian-Eritrean border dispute, and more than half-million residents on both sides of the frontier have been chased from their homes.

Both countries have accepted an 11-point OAU framework agreement on ending hostilities, but they differ over how to implement it.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said on his arrival in Algiers that ``not much'' had happened during his discussions in the Libyan capital of Tripoli on Friday. It was not clear whether Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki, who reportedly participated in the talks by telephone, would attend the summit.

The talks were organized by Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who has made his first appearance at the OAU summit in decades, and who has already been mediating between warring sides in Congo. Since the United Nations suspended sanctions against Libya earlier this year in exchange for Gadhafi's surrender for trial of two suspects in bombing of a U.S. airliner in 1988, the charismatic Libyan leader has been trying to assume a leading role on the continent.

Former U.S. National Security Adviser Anthony Lake has been in Algiers since Saturday, also hoping to help resolve the Horn of Africa conflict.

Lake traveled with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Susan Rice, who met with Rwandan and South African delegates to discuss possible American support for an international force in Congo.

Rwanda and Uganda signed a peace agreement Saturday in the Zambian capital of Lusaka with Congolese President Laurent Kabila and his allies Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia. But the divided rebels, who are fighting to topple Kabila, failed to sign the accord because they could not agree who should be representing them.

The agreement calls for a cease-fire within 24 hours and asks the United Nations or the OAU to deploy an international force to monitor the cease-fire and the disarmament of Rwandan Hutu militiamen responsible for the 1994 genocide in Rwanda.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan was expected to discuss with Kabila and Rwandan President Pasteur Bizimungu what mandate and role the United Nations can play in Congo. The Hutu militia are fighting alongside the Congolese Armed Forces.

Zambian President Frederick Chiluba, who wanted the agreement brokered before the OAU summit, said he would return to talks with the rebels after he comes back from Algiers.