Sudanese forces ‘liberate Heglig town’
| Sudanese forces ‘liberate Heglig town’ | ||
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Main town in Heglig region retaken by Sudan’s army, after South Sudan troops seized it, President Omar al-Bashir says.
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| Sudan’s President Omar al-Bashir has said his troops have defeated South Sudanese forces who occupied his country’s main oilfield, but added that the battle was not over.”They started the fighting and we will announce when it will end, and our advance will never stop,” Bashir told a rally attended by thousands in Khartoum on Friday.He dismissed a statement by his Southern counterpart Salva Kiir that the occupying troops had withdrawn.
“There is no withdrawal. We beat them by force… Until now, their people are running,” Bashir, wearing an olive army uniform, said at military headquarters. Bashir also threatened to keep Sudan’s oil pipelines closed to the South’s crude exports. “We don’t want fees from the oil of South Sudan and we will not open the pipeline. There is no oil from South Sudan that will pass through our pure land, so that not one dollar goes to these criminals,” Bashir told the crowd at the rally. Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein earlier announced on state television that his soldiers “were able to liberate Heglig town by force” after a 10-day occupation by South Sudan. Our enemy suffered heavy losses in people and equipment,” Hussein said. Border clashes between Sudan and South Sudan escalated last week with waves of air strikes hitting the South, and Juba seizing the Heglig oil hub on April 10. While religious leaders in the north were calling during Friday prayers for a holy war to reclaim the territory, South Sudan’s Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin gave the first word that the crisis, which had sparked fierce international diplomacy to avert a wider war, was easing. “An orderly withdrawal will commence immediately and shall be completed within three days,” he said, reading a presidential statement. Benjamin said the ownership of the region would be decided by the court of arbitration. Arab League meeting Jonathan Temin, the director of the Sudan Programme for the US Institute of Peace, told Al Jazeera that “this is the highest level of violence that we have seen between Sudan and South Sudan in recent years”. “The news that South Sudan is withdrawing from Heglig is encouraging. But in Khartoum in the north, they are saying they have taken Heglig militarily. So it remains to be seen what the real story is.” The confusion about the fate of Heglig comes as the Arab League said it would hold an emergency meeting over renewed violence between Sudan and South Sudan. Ahmed bin Helli, deputy secretary-general, said on Thursday that the meeting, requested by Sudan, would bring together the regional bloc’s foreign ministers and would be held next week in Cairo, the Egyptian capital. Sudan and South Sudan have clashed over Heglig, an oil-rich region that accounts for about 50 per cent of Sudan’s oil production and is currently occupied by troops from the south. South Sudan, which gained independence last July after voting in a referendum to secede from Sudan, claims it occupied Heglig after it was attacked by the Sudanese army. It has so far ignored calls by the international community to pull its troops out, saying it is defending its territorial integrity. Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary-general, has called the south’s seizure of Heglig an “illegal act” and urged the two nations to negotiate to avoid all-out war. Colonel Philip Aguer, the spokesperson of the South Sudan army, said the Sudanese army had carried out attacks on the south on Wednesday and on Thursday in the latest clashes. The two the sides have never fully agreed where their shared border lies nor have they reached agreement on how to share oil wealth that is pumped from the border region. Hague court ruling A ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague in 2009 appears to put Heglig in the Sudan state of Southern Kordofan, which the South now disputes. Sudan’s president, meanwhile, has said he will “cut” the hand of aggressors and retake the contested Heglig region. Omar al-Bashir, Sudan’s president, told a rally in Sudan’s North Kordofan state on Thursday he would not surrender “an inch” of the country and that he would firmly deal with its enemies. “We will not give them an inch of our country, and whoever extends his hand on Sudan, we will cut it,” Bashir told thousands of people in El-Obeid, North Kordofan’s capital. “Heglig is in Kordofan,” he said in the speech broadcast on state television, dancing and waving his walking stick. Al Jazeera’s Peter Greste, reporting from Bentiu in South Sudan, said neither side was willing to give way. He said military sources inside South Sudan spoke of a “renewed outbreak of very heavy fighting at town some distance north of Heglig”. The developments come as a US envoy said on Thursday that Sudan had agreed “in principle” to allow assistance into South Kordofan, where aid workers say that hundreds of thousands could go hungry. Princeton Lyman, US special envoy on the two Sudans, said he called on authorities in Khartoum to show that they were serious about putting an aid proposal into action, amid fears it will soon be too late due to rain. “I pressed again for the government to prove this and prove it rapidly because the rainy season is nearly upon us. They have said yes in principle but they’ve got questions about its implementation,” Lyman said. Speaking by telephone from Khartoum, Lyman said that the situation “is getting worse and people are in real basic need for both food, medicines”. http://www.aljazeera.com/video/africa/2012/04/2012420121142587117.html#.T5IofUsIZ0I.facebook |
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