High level talks on Sudan's Abyei fail

2011-05-31 09:10

Khartoum - South Sudan's vice president Riek Machar failed on Monday to persuade Khartoum to withdraw its army from the flashpoint Abyei area, he told a news conference after meeting his northern counterpart.

Northern troops overran the contested border region nine days ago, drawing condemnation from world powers, who have warned that the action is a threat to peace between the former civil war enemies.

During the first direct talks since the crisis, Machar said he requested that the troops pull out of the region, but northern vice president Ali Osman Taha refused, saying they would remain until a political solution was reached.

The meeting in Khartoum was designed to ease tensions over what Machar called a "boiling issue," with the southern government demanding the immediate withdrawal of the north's troops and President Omar al-Bashir insisting Abyei is "north Sudanese land."

Machar also rejected the "military administration" the north had installed, after the southern-appointed administration was driven out, stressing that it was not capable of resolving the "humanitarian disaster in the area."

But he reiterated south Sudan president Salva Kiir's pledge that the south would not return to war with the north over Abyei.

The United Nations says up to 40 000 people were displaced by the violence, at least 15 000 of whom are living in the open in Turalei, some 130km south of Abyei town.

Security

Earlier on Monday, a spokesperson for the Sudanese armed forces of the north (SAF), confirmed the appointment of Brigadier Izzedine Osman as Abyei's caretaker administrator.

"He is not a military governor. But the government has given him the task of administering the area before the new administration is appointed," SAF spokesperson Sawarmi Khaled Saad told AFP.

Osman led the SAF's seizure of Abyei town on May 21, branded an "invasion" by the government of the south, in response to an attack two days earlier on a joint SAF-UN convoy to the north, in which at least 22 northern troops were killed.

The Sudanese army said its intervention was "legitimate", in view of its responsibility "to protect the country, its sovereignty and security", and has urged people who had fled the violence to return.

But Machar said the army's presence was preventing them from returning to Abyei, which a UN spokesperson described on Saturday as a "ghost town", populated only by Sudanese soldiers and allied Misseriya tribesmen.

"The people who have been displaced from Abyei have no confidence in the Sudanese army, and they will not return," Machar said.

- SAPA