Mbeki: North, South Sudan talks to resume
2011-03-17 22:35
Khartoum - Leaders of north and south Sudan have agreed to resume talks, mediator and former South African president Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday, after a southern walkout over an alleged plot by Khartoum.
"The decision taken earlier to suspend negotiations, that matter has been addressed and all of the outstanding negotiations will now proceed," Mbeki told a news conference in Khartoum.
Presidents Omar al-Bashir and the south's Salva Kiir agreed at an emergency meeting chaired by Mbeki to act "immediately" to examine documents offered by senior southern officials as proof that Khartoum was backing rebel militias and destabilising the south's government.
Negotiations between the two sides to overcome a host of unresolved issues ahead of south Sudan's independence in July were broken off on Saturday amid bloody clashes between the south's army, the SPLA, and rebel militias in two southern states.
Northern officials say the documents leaked to the press by southern officials and claiming to prove Khartoum's collusion with the militias were fabricated.
"Both the SPLA and the Sudanese Armed Forces will look at all those documents and all those allegations together, to make a determination as to their truth or otherwise," the former South African president said.
"They will report back to the presidents by Sunday," he added.
Sensitive issues
Mbeki said the leaders would also act immediately to address concerns about troop buildups in the disputed border region of Abyei by implementing an agreement reached in January to boost security in the region.
A monitoring mechanism, chaired by the UN mission in Sudan, will be activated to ensure the redeployment of troops as agreed, Mbeki added, and that "there is no threat that any invasion should take place in Abyei by any of those armed formations".
In a sign of the deep mistrust between the two sides, Pagan Amum, the secretary general of the south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) on Sunday accused Khartoum of arming Arab tribes all along the north-south border in a policy of attempted genocide.
The northern government's chief negotiator on Abyei, Al-Dirdiri Mohammed Ahmed, for his part blamed all the latest violence in Abyei on the presence of thousands of "irregular" southern troops and warned of serious violence unless they were withdrawn by the SPLA, as stipulated in the January accord.
At least 70 people were killed and three villages razed in clashes in the flashpoint region earlier this month between fighters from the Arab Misseriya tribe, which supports the Khartoum government, and the Ngok Dinka people, who back the south.
The future of Abyei is the most sensitive of the issues that Sudan's ruling National Congress Party and the SPLM have to negotiate ahead of southern secession in less than four months time.
The agenda also includes borders, citizenship, security and debt.
Mbeki said all the scheduled meetings on pre-independence arrangements, including a second round of economic discussions to be held in Ethiopia next month, would go ahead as planned.
"The negotiations must take place, so that all of the outstanding matters are finalised before July 9. And I'm quite certain we will achieve that outcome," said the former South African leader.