Bashir, Kiir set to meet
2013-01-16 09:10
Khartoum - The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan will hold
their second summit in a month on Jan. 24, a Sudanese official said on Tuesday,
in a fresh bid to defuse tensions over oil, territory and other disputes.
The neighbours came close to war in April in the worst
border clashes since South Sudan declared independence from Sudan in 2011.
After mediation from the African Union, both agreed in
September to resume oil exports from the landlocked South through Sudan, a
lifeline for both struggling economies.
But mutual distrust remains deep and neither side has yet
withdrawn its armies from the border, a condition for both to restart oil
flows.
The AU brought Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his
South Sudan counterpart Salva Kiir together in the Ethiopian capital Addis
Ababa at the start of the month to end the stalemate.
"The presidents will continue their discussions in
Addis Ababa on January 24 according to the schedule agreed at their [first]
summit," Bashir's media secretary Emad Said Ahmed told Reuters.
South Sudan's information minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin
could not be reached on his mobile phone. South Sudan has said Kiir is always
willing to meet Bashir.
Security officials from both countries are currently holding
talks in Addis Ababa to discuss practical steps to set up a buffer zone along
the disputed border.
The deal has been complicated by fighting on the Sudanese
side of the boundary between Sudan's army and SPLM-North rebels who have vowed
to topple Bashir.
Khartoum say South Sudan supports the insurgents. Juba
denies that and says Sudan is backing militias in its territory.
South Sudan became independent in July 2011 under a peace
agreement which ended decades of civil war fuelled by ideology, oil, ethnicity
and religion.
