Hope mounts for deal in Sudan, South Sudan summit

ADDIS ABABA – Sudan and South Sudan’s leaders were to meet yesterday as international pressure mounts to settle long-running disputes that have brought the former civil war foes to the brink of renewed conflict.
The rival delegations have held drawn-out talks that began several months before South Sudan split away from what was Africa’s biggest nation in July 2011, following a landslide independence vote after decades of war.

Among issues on the table Sunday are expected to be ownership of contested regions along their frontier – especially the flashpoint Abyei region – and the setting up of a demilitarised border zone after bloody clashes.
Multiple rounds of talks have failed to find solutions, but both sides have said they are now optimistic, given the looming threat of UN Security Council sanctions and the fact that the presidents are meeting face-to-face.
‘We are still facing difficulties… but we are hopeful we can reach a deal,’ said Atif Kiir, spokesman for South Sudan’s delegation to the African Union mediated talks in the Ethiopian capital.
‘The summit is to reach a comprehensive agreement between the two countries, so let us hope,’ his Sudanese counterpart Badr el-din Abdullah told reporters late Saturday, as negotiations stretched into the night.
A UN deadline passed Saturday for Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and his Southern counterpart Salva Kiir to settle the raft of issues unresolved when the South became the world’s newest nation last year.While Kiir arrived Saturday, Bashir was expected to land later Sunday, first visiting Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Hailemariam Desalegn, before meeting his counterpart for talks later in the afternoon.
For once, the mood in these long-running talks appeared positive, with both Khartoum and Juba apparently keen to end conflict and a stalemate over stalled oil production that is crippling both their economies.
Chief mediator Thabo Mbeki, the former South Africa president, was seen shuttling between multiple delegations addressing issues of security, border demarcation, oil and finance.
‘There does seem a genuine move towards finding a broad solution, even if technical issues and details will certainly need fixing in future meetings,’ said a Western diplomat.
‘We are not going to go back to fighting each other, we know the cost of that after 50 years of war,’ said the South’s spokesman Kiir. ‘It is time to rebuild our lives, to rebuild our nation.’
-Nampa-AFP