ADDIS ABABA, June 20 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopia Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) on Wednesday called for opening of "new chapter" with longtime bitter rival Eritrea.

In a press statement, MoFA said it considers Eritrean President Isaias Afwerki's decision to accept Ethiopia's peace offer as a "positive step" and applauds his plans to send an Eritrean delegation to Ethiopia for peace talks.

The statement comes hours after the Eritrean president announced on Eritrean state TV that his government is sending a delegation to Ethiopia to end a bitter two decades old border dispute.

Afwerki broke two weeks of Eritrean silence to Ethiopia's offer to unconditionally implement the decisions of peace agreement that ended a two-year border war from 1998-2000, which is estimated to have killed 70,000 people from both sides.

On June 5, the Executive Committee of the ruling coalition EPRDF said it is committed to an unconditional implementation of the December 2000 Algiers peace agreement with Eritrea.

The peace agreement ended the two-year border war, but a tense armed standoff continued, with the two countries engaging in skirmishes occasionally.

Ethiopia until this month had declined to endorse the results of the peace agreement fully, including the symbolically important town of Badme which Ethiopia currently controls but which was awarded to Eritrea.

Eritrea for its part has insisted the border demarcation has to be done first before any talks on normalizing ties.