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| Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir waves to supporters during a visit to Osaef town in Sudan’s Red Sea state yesterday |
But while the UN Security Council welcomed the accord new fears were raised over heightening conflict in neighbouring South Kordofan where Khartoum’s military had threatened to shoot down UN flights, according to the US envoy to the UN.
Former South African president Thabo Mbeki, heading an African Union panel, brokered the accord in Addis Ababa under which the north’s troops agreed to leave Abyei.
The north occupied Abyei on May 21 and tens of thousands have since fled their homes, mainly to the south.
The deal would “bring to an end this threat of violence, and actual violence in the area, so we are really hoping that Security Council will look at this agreement as early as possible and take all the necessary decisions,” Mbeki told the 15-nation body by video link from the Ethiopian capital.
About 4,000 Ethiopian troops are expected to move into Abyei, which has become a near ghost region since the north’s occupation.
It had been mainly inhabited by Ngok Dinka people who consider themselves southerners. But Misseriya nomads from the north herd their cattle through the territory in the dry season and are strongly supported by the Khartoum government.
US envoy to the UN, Susan Rice, said it was “urgent” for the Ethiopian troops to be deployed as quickly as possible. She said the US would soon distribute a draft resolution to other council members giving a UN mandate to the Ethiopian deployment.
Two decades of civil war up to 2005 left 2mn dead and a new front in the north-south battle has opened up ahead of Southern Sudan’s formal declaration of independence on July 9.
Khartoum forces and their allies launched a major assault on June 5 in South Kordofan, which is north of the border but peopled by many southern sympathisers.
Rice said up to 75,000 people had fled their homes in South Kordofan and aid groups estimate that hundreds have been killed, but the UN says its mission, UNMIS, has been refused access to the state.
Sudanese forces “have threatened to shoot down UNMIS air patrols, they have taken control of the airport in Kadugli and refused landing rights to UNMIS flights,” Rice told a UN Security Council debate.
The UN mission in the state is now “dangerously low” on food and an estimated 10,000 people have gathered around the UN compound in Kadugli, she added.
“The reports my government has been receiving of the ongoing fighting are horrifying both because of the scope of human rights abuses and because of the ethnic dimensions of the conflict,” Rice said.
She highlighted reports that pro-Khartoum forces had “arrested and allegedly executed” sympathisers of southern Sudan.
“We have received further allegations, not yet corroborated, but so alarming that I must mention them, that the Sudanese Armed Forces are arming elements of the local population and placing mines in areas of Kadugli,” Rice added.
“Security services and military forces have reportedly detained and summarily executed local authorities, ethnic rivals, medical personnel and others.
Mbeki said senior political leaders from South Kordofan and neighbouring states had started arriving in Addis Ababa and that from today there would be “serious” talks on ending the fighting there.
“We are hoping to move to that South Kordofan matter immediately and urgently,” he said.
The AU envoy said there had also been progress in talks on formal relations between the north and south after the July 9 split.
He said discussions had been “finalised” on issues such as dividing Sudan’s international debt and on oil revenues, currency and other economic measures.