* Sudan says Juba holding up talks with claims
* Juba says entitled to raise more disputed areas
* Talks continue on Abyei region
By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA, June 7 (Reuters) – Sudan and South Sudan broke
off security talks on Thursday after failing to agree on a
demilitarised zone along their disputed border to help prevent
them slipping into outright warfare.
The African neighbours came close to war when a border
dispute in April saw the worst violence since South Sudan split
from Sudan in July under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of
civil war.
Both countries, which accuse each other of supporting rebels
in the other’s territory, returned to African Union-mediated
negotiations last week, the first direct talks since the border
clashes.
After 10 days of talks, the two sides were unable to agree
where to draw a demilitarised buffer zone along the 1,800-km-
(1,200-mile-) long border.
Khartoum’s delegation accused South Sudan of making new land
claims, most importantly to the Heglig oil field whose output is
vital to Sudan’s battered economy. The southern army had
temporarily occupied Heglig during the recent fighting.
“The border is based on a map that we have been using for
the past six years (since the 2005 peace deal was signed), but
they (South Sudan) have included five areas within their
border,” Sudanese Defence Minister Abdel Raheem Mohamed Hussein
said.
“We consider it as a hostile action,” he told reporters in
Addis Ababa, where the talks took place.
To back its claim to the field, Khartoum has cited a 2009
ruling by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague on
Abyei, another disputed area. The court issued maps that put
Heglig in the north.
Juba contests Khartoum’s claim, citing an internal boundary
marked from the British colonial rule that ended in 1956, and
the ethnicity of the local population.
There was no immediate word from South Sudan but members of
Juba’s delegation confirmed talks on border security had ended
for now with no agreement and no new date scheduled.
Despite the lack of progress, Hussein said both sides had
renewed pledges to end hostilities during the talks.
“We will continue attending these talks but the (African
Union) panel will now take time and invite (us back),” he said.
Sudan accuses South Sudan of supporting rebels fighting the
army in two southern border states. Juba denies the claims and
says Khartoum funds militias on its side of the border.
Diplomats and the Sudanese foreign ministry said talks on a
future status for Abyei, another contested border area, would
probably continue for the next few days.
Both countries are at loggerheads on a string of issues such
as oil payments. Landlocked South Sudan took three-quarters of
Sudan’s oil production — the lifeline of both economies — but
needs to sell its crude through northern export facilities.
Both countries have failed to agree on a transit pipeline
fee and Juba has shut down its entire oil output of roughly
350,000 barrels after Khartoum started seizing southern oil as
compensation for what it calls unpaid fees.
Some two million people died in the civil conflict between
north and south, waged for all but a few years between 1955 and
2005 over ideology, ethnicity, religion and oil.
(Editing by Ulf Laessing and Michael Roddy)
