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Sudan politician stokes tension
04/04/2008 12:19 - (SA)
Juba - A prominent south Sudan politician, whose arrival in the contested oil-rich border area of Abyei has stoked tension with the Arab north, accused the army on Thursday of mobilising to attack.
Edward Lino, the local chairperson of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement, said 222 soldiers entered Abyei town on Tuesday and that more forces deployed north of the area's presumed border on Wednesday.
"I am in Abyei and yesterday they brought more troops. We think they are planning to attack," he said. "They are reinforcing troops in addition to those brought on Tuesday. They are amassing in both directions."
The interim commander of the Sudan armed forces in Abyei denied the claims.
Forces 'protecting oil'
"No, no, no. This is wrong," Brigadier General Muntasir Sabier said. "We have some forces that were deployed to protect the oil fields only and now they are starting to go back," he said.
"We signed a peace agreement; we have no intention to (attack)," he said.
Lino said shipping extra troops into town violated a fragile, three-year-old peace agreement that ended two decades of devastating civil war between north and south Sudan.
The general said Tuesday's new arrivals were members of the 31st Brigade based in Abyei who were returning from time in Darfur, the western region where government forces are battling ethnic minority rebels.
The Sudanese army has previously accused Lino of bringing extra forces from his party's armed wing and also deploying north, setting up checkpoints.
Presidential approval?
Sudan's two coalition partners are at loggerheads over what the mainly Muslim north interpreted as the rival Christian and animist south's unilateral dispatch of Lino to administer the area, without presidential approval.
The SPLM said it is losing patience with what it sees as the failure of President Omar al-Beshir's National Congress Party to implement a protocol for governing this oil-rich zone during a transition period.
In 2011, Abyei will hold two referendums: one on whether to retain its special administrative status in north Sudan or be incorporated into the south; and the second one on whether the south should break away as an independent state.
- AFP
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