AFP/Khartoum
Sudan’s chief Abyei negotiator said yesterday the northern government was “open” to negotiations with south Sudan over the contested border region of Abyei, as the south said more than 150,000 people had fled the area. “We are open to negotiations,” Al-Dirdiri Mohamed Ahmed, the National Congress Party’s chief negotiator on Abyei, told AFP. Ahmed, popularly known as Dirdiri, said the NCP and the south Sudan People’s Liberation Movement would meet in Addis Ababa today for talks that will also be attended by the African Union panel on Sudan and South Africa’s former president Thabo Mbeki. “We hope that we will reach a compromise on a number of points,” Dirdiri said, adding that indirect talks were already under way between the two sides through the AU panel on Sudan and the United Nations. The SPLM yesterday said that it too wanted to resume talks but could not confirm their start date. “Definitely there will be more talks between the SPLM and NCP,” said Atif Keer, a senior staffer on the team of secretary general Pagan Amum, who heads the SPLM negotiations. The UN is to send a representative to Sudan from May 31 to June 8 to assess the human rights situation, including the consequences of clashes in Abyei. Mohamed Chande Othman, the UN’s independent human rights expert, said in a statement he “will focus in particular on the arrests and detentions in the north (and) the armed confrontations that have taken place between the (southern army) and armed militia groups.” A southern Sudanese minister said that more than 150,000 people have fled violence ravaging the fertile border region and surrounding areas since May 21 when northern troops and tanks overran Abyei. “The situation is terrible—over 150,000 have fled Abyei and the areas around,” said James Kok Ruea, the south’s humanitarian affairs minister. UN estimates put the number of displaced at up to 40,000. Aid workers reported a massive movement of people. “We have seen thousands of people on the move, mainly women and children,” said Raphael Gorgeu, head of mission for Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which is running a hospital in Agok, 40km south of Abyei town. Another 15,000 people are living in the open in Turalei, some 130km from Abyei town, according to the UN. “The situation is hard and people are struggling,” said Dominic Deng Kuoc, Twic county commissioner, which includes Turalei and borders Abyei. G8 leaders condemned the upsurge of violence in Abyei and called for a withdrawal of all “unauthorised forces” from the region after a two-day summit in Deauville, northern France. Their joint declaration at the end of the summit called on the parties “to reach agreements on all outstanding issues of the CPA, particularly the status of Abyei, oil issues and debt.” Southern President Salva Kiir, who is also vice president for all of Sudan, said on Thursday he hoped a resolution can be found for the final steps of the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended more than two decades of civil war. “We still believe we will resolve all the CPA provisions by peaceful means,” Kiir said. Abyei’s future is the most sensitive of a raft of issues that the two sides had been struggling to reach agreement on before the south’s full independence in July. The northern troops have deployed as far south as the River Kiir, known in northern Sudan as Bahr Al Arab, which has become the front line between the Sudanese Armed Forces and southern troops. Dirdiri said the SAF moved to the “northern part of Abyei area, till the northern bank of the river to drive out” south Sudan People’s Liberation Movement forces from the disputed area.