Sudan Agrees to Resume Talks With South

Silva Kir, the leader of south Sudan and President Omar al-Bashir of Sudan. The President said he would recognize the south if it voted for separation from the central government. Factional fighting in the south may jeopardize their independence., a photo by Pan-African News Wire File Photos on Flickr.

Sudan agrees to resume talks with S.Sudan next week

Thu Jun 14, 2012 11:24pm GMT

No quick breakthrough seen

Disputed border areas

KHARTOUM, June 14 (Reuters) - Sudan said it had agreed to resume talks next week with South Sudan to end hostilities between the arch-foes, state news agency SUNA said on Thursday.

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 returned to African Union-mediated negotiations at the end of May, but broke off talks last week after failing to agree where to draw a demilitarised buffer zone along the disputed border as a first step to end hostilities.

Talks over border security will resume in Addis Ababa on Tuesday, Sudan's Foreign Ministry spokesman El-Obeid Morawah told SUNA late on Thursday. South Sudan had already said it was ready to resume talks next week.

Western diplomats see no quick breakthrough as positions over a long list of disputes seem far apart. Both sides accuse each other of supporting rebels in the other's territory.

South Sudan said on Wednesday it was seeking international arbitration over several disputed border areas, some of which are oil-producing.

They also have to agree on how much the landlocked South should pay to export its oil through the north. Juba halted oil production in January to stop Khartoum from seizing southern oil for what the latter calls unpaid export fees.

Some 2 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. (Reporting by Ulf Laessing; Editing by Peter Cooney)