International calls for an end to the border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea are falling on deaf ears as both sides, obsessed with national pride, find more reason to fight on than sit down and cut a peace deal.
The United Nations, the US government, the European Union and African leaders have all pleaded for restraint since Ethiopia and Eritrea began pounding each other's positions along their mountainous border a week ago.
Neither side will admit firing the first shot, even though they both claim to have the upper hand. Eritrea says it has simply been defending its positions so a ceasefire can only be agreed if Ethiopia stops attacking.
Ethiopia says it merely wants Eritrea to pull out of the disputed areas it occupied last year and that, unless the international community can persuade it to do just that, the war will continue.
Finding a middle ground would be difficult under any conditions, but diplomats say it is made almost impossible by the fervent pride of the two warrior nations.
"There are highly principled, exceedingly stubborn and almost irrecoverably committed people on both sides," said a senior western diplomat. "That's not a good recipe for reaching a compromise."
Despite a lull in the conflict in the last three days, military analysts say the war is likely to get worse and could prove disastrous if both sides deploy their full military might.
"You've got to accept that this war will produce tens of thousands of people killed," the diplomat said.
Ethiopia this week signalled its determination to continue fighting until Eritrea withdraws from the land it occupied in the first round of the border war last May.
"Ethiopia has no option but to fight the aggressor army, to root it out of our territory, and Ethiopia has full confidence that it has the capability to achieve this objective," the Foreign Minister, Mr Seyoum Mesfin, said.
If things had gone according to plan, the two countries which separated amicably in 1993 would now be spearheading an "African renaissance" of democracy and economic development.
But their friendship disintegrated and the conflict erupted last May when Eritrean troops occupied a 400-square-km (155-square-mile) triangle of scrubby Ethiopian-administered land around the town of Badme on the western end of their border.
A six-week ground and air war ensued, but Eritrean forces stayed put and a string of mediation efforts brought no breakthrough.
Eritrea refused to accept a peace plan which called on it to withdraw from the contested territory.
With Ethiopia now trying to drive them out militarily, a peaceful withdrawal of Eritrean troops seems further off than ever. While they are among the world's poorest countries, both sides have powerful armies and have gone on a new arms buying spree in recent months, spending some $300 million between them on high-tech military hardware.
Most significantly, each has dramatically increased the size of its air force with eastern Europeanbuilt fighter planes.
And a moratorium on air raids brokered by the US last June has ended with Ethiopian forces deploying fighter planes on both fronts.
Neither side has released their own casualty figures from the fresh fighting, but it is feared that hundreds of troops have already been killed in mainly hand-to-hand fighting and artillery exchanges.