Sudans agree to talk, but peace hopes dim
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“It depends on the other side. Are they here for peace? All indications are that they are not complying with the U.N. Security Council resolution. They are still bombing South Sudan. They are attacking South Sudan as we speak, and they are violating the Road Map and the Security Council resolution literally in all aspects,” Amun said.
On the eve of the fresh round of talks, the Khartoum government announced it would comply with a U.N. Security Council resolution demanding a troop withdrawal from the disputed Abyei region. South Sudan had pulled out a contingent of 700 police officers earlier this month.
Southern negotiator Amum said his team would open this round of talks by listing alleged Sudanese violations of the Security Council resolution and a Road Map for settling contentious issues left over from when South Sudan gained independence last July. He says the list would include the question of Abyei.
“We will put a clear list and matrix of violations by the government of Sudan, including their failure to withdraw their forces from Abyei. We are here also to discuss implementation of the security arrangements as provided for in the road map and the resolution. We are not here to negotiate, we are here to implement,” Amun said.
Sudanese news agencies quoted a Khartoum military spokesman Monday as denying Amum’s accusations. The spokesman challenged the Juba government to prove the charges and said Khartoum’s forces had nothing to do with whatever is happening in South Sudan.
Diplomatic observers Tuesday said it is difficult to imagine a quick resolution given the myriad of complex issues involving borders, oil and citizenship status facing negotiators. One diplomatic observer noted that it has taken nearly a month just to get the two sides to heed a Security Council order to return to the African Union-mediated talks.
A mediation panel led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki has been unable to bring the two sides closer together during several previous rounds of talks. Mr. Mbeki last month described the neighbors as being in a state of war.
The breakdown of talks has led to what diplomats say is the worst outbreak of fighting since South Sudan gained independence.
June 1, 2012
JUBA, South Sudan, June 1 (UPI) — Sudan and South Sudan have agreed to resume negotiations aimed at ending a simmering conflict over disputed oil fields that both need for survival.
But observers don’t expect a swift breakthrough to avert all-out war.
Both sides are facing ruin because of the fighting that has flared for months along their poorly defined border and totally shut down oil production.
The clashes began after the southern government in January cut off its entire oil output of 350,000 barrels per day through a 994-mile pipeline that runs northward to the Red Sea terminal at Port Sudan.
The southern government in its ramshackle capital, Juba, claimed the Sudanese government in Khartoum had seized southern oil worth $800 million. Khartoum said Juba hadn’t paid transit fees.
Without oil revenues, neither side can afford a full-scale war.
“Both economies are in a race against time, as the halt in oil production and transit fees bring their oil-dependent economies to the brink of collapse,” the Financial Times reported.
The halt in oil exports from the Sudans, largely from the impoverished south that’s still struggling to rebuild after two ruinous decades of war with the north, doesn’t constitute a major glitch in global energy supply terms. But the simmering conflict, reigniting the 1983-2005 civil war in which 2 million people died, would destabilize East Africa and the Horn of Africa.
This region is on the cusp of a major oil and gas boom that has the potential to transform what has largely been an economically depressed zone.
Sudanese Finance Minister Ali Mahmoud says the dispute has left a $2.4 billion hole in Khartoum’s state finances. Exports have slumped 83 percent. Annual inflation hit nearly 29 percent in April.
The shutdown has essentially cut off the south’s oil revenues, 98 percent of state income. Oil constitutes just more than 40 percent of the north’s revenues.
Some 85 percent of the oil lies in the south, mainly in border states where the heavy clashes have taken place in the last few weeks. But the landlocked south can only export through the Chinese-built pipeline running through the north.
Kornelio Koriom Mayik, governor of South Sudan’s central bank, says the south’s in bad shape, too.
“We’re importing everything and we’re drawing on reserves, so of course we have some difficulties,” he said a few days ago.
“By my calculations, unless there are shocks, we can go on for another seven months without oil,” using foreign reserves “in the region of $1.5 billion.”
Both sides appear to have dug in their heels at talks brokered by the African Union, with no indication either is prepared to make concessions.
The most likely prospect of heading off a new war between the Arab, Muslim north and the infant state of South Sudan, which is mainly Christian and animist, appears to be intervention by China.
Beijing is the main buyer of Sudan’s oil and has multibillion-dollar investments on both sides. It thus has a vested strategic interest in bringing the two sides together and has been at the center of diplomatic efforts to get them back to negotiations.
The south seeks to build a pipeline running southeast from its oilfields to Kenya’s Indian Ocean ports via Uganda, cutting out the north altogether.
But, Britain’s Guardian newspaper observed May 17, “South Sudan’s pipe dream risks remaining just that.
“There are 1,000 factors which could set back such a project – bandits, weather, political scrapping over cost, and so on.
“The port of Lamu in Kenya, the planned sea connection for the pipeline hasn’t even been built yet.”
Khartoum is bitterly opposed to such a project.
South Sudanese President Salva Kiir, a former rebel commander during the civil war, visited Beijing in April seeking Chinese aid to build the pipeline. But Prime Minister Hu Jintao has refused to put up funds for the project for fear of jeopardizing China’s investments in the north.
However, Beijing has hedged its bets by offering the south bank loans and emergency aid.
That’s not likely to save South Sudan unless it cuts a deal with Khartoum, or its friends in Africa can drum up $7 billion, to cover lost oil income and enable it to defy the north.
© 2012 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved
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