Air strikes on South as Sudan quits summit

Added by on March 27, 2012

Sudanese warplanes on Tuesday launched air raids on oil-rich areas of South Sudan, a Southern official said. The raids threaten a recent rapprochement despite UN chief Ban Ki-moon’s call for calm.

Earlier, Sudan suspended an April 3 summit between President Omar al-Bashir and his southern counterpart Salva Kiir in Juba following border clashes on Monday, although Southern officials later said the invitation still stood.

“After a day of attacks by air and ground troops on Monday, this morning we heard the Antonov (aircraft) return, and dropped two bombs,” said Gideon Gatpan, information minister for South Sudan’s Unity state.

Gatpan added he believed the air strikes targeted oil fields but there was no apparent damage.

Sudanese foreign ministry spokesman Al-Obeid Meruh said the bombing was Khartoum’s response to an attack launched by the South with heavy weapons on an oil field “inside Sudanese territory.”

“What the Sudanese army did is react to the sources of this heavy weapon attack,” said Meruh.

Kiir, however, said northern bombers and ground troops struck first on Monday, moving into Unity State before Juba’s troop fought back and took the Heglig oil hub.

The Sudanese army said calm had returned on Tuesday and northern troops were “fully in control of the Heglig area.”

South Sudan’s Information Minister, Barnaba Marial Benjamin, said his country would not return to fighting Khartoum despite the clashes, and left the door open for next week’s summit.

“As our president (Salva Kiir) has said, we cannot be dragged into a senseless war, but we will be in position to protect our territory and integrity,” Benjamin told reporters.

“Our invitation to President Omar al-Bashir still stands as it is,” he added. “We are ready for any dialogue.”

The latest fighting follows a controversial “framework agreement” reached earlier this month at African Union-led talks in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

The agreement gives nationals of each state the right to live, move and carry on economic activities in the other state.

Analysts saw the latest flare-up as an effort to sabotage moves towards warmer bilateral relations.

Magdi El Gizouli, a fellow at the Rift Valley Institute, said it was “highly plausible” that the Sudanese armed forces had launched an attack on a disputed part of the border “with the intention of spoiling this whole rapprochement between north and South Sudan.”

He said an Islamist bloc in the Sudanese elite, with considerable support within the armed forces, was strongly opposed to the framework deal.

But there are also elements in South Sudan “who think they can bring down Khartoum,” he added.

Another analyst, El Shafie Mohammed El Makki, said that without clear evidence as to who struck first the exact reason for the clash is unclear.

But the head of political science at the University of Khartoum added: “There are some people in the north and some people in the South, they do not want any normalization between the two countries.”

However, the analysts said they did not expect a return to full-scale war.

The UN’s refugee agency warned that the bombings put the lives of more than 16,000 Sudanese refugees at risk. It urged the fugitives, who had escaped fighting between rebels and government troops in Sudan’s South Kordofan, to move.

Both Heglig and the area bombed on Tuesday are run by the Greater Nile Petroleum Operating Company (GNPOC), a consortium led by China’s state oil giant CNPC.

Although both countries claim parts of the Heglig area, Gizouli said it “is firmly in north Sudan”.

Sudanese state radio reported early on Tuesday that the government had “suspended Bashir’s visit to Juba after the South Sudanese army attacked Heglig.”

Kiir’s comment that his troops had taken the oil centre “reflected extreme hatred to Sudan,” said Information Minister Abdullah Ali Massar, the official SUNA news agency reported.

Ban called on both countries to end the clashes and respect the agreements on border security they had already reached, said spokesman Martin Nesirky.

The two sides should “utilise to the fullest extent existing political and security mechanisms to peacefully address their differences,” he added.

The proposed talks between Bashir and Kiir had been aimed at easing tensions that pushed the two countries to the brink of war as recently as early March.

Border tensions have mounted since South Sudan split from Sudan in July after an overwhelming vote for secession that followed Africa’s longest war.

Later in March, after months of failed negotiations, a dispute over oil fees and mutual accusations of backing rebels on each other’s territory, South Sudan’s chief negotiator Pagan Amum said relations had improved.

Amum and a South Sudanese delegation visited Khartoum last week to invite their “brother” Bashir to the summit and said he had accepted.