JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — South Sudan and Sudan have failed to reach an agreement on how to carry out security arrangements and resume oil exports, officials said Saturday after several days of talks.
The two sides were in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital, to talk about setting up a safe demilitarized border zone, which would require both South Sudan and Sudan to withdraw their armies at least six miles from the contested border region.
South Sudan broke away from Sudan in 2011, but disputes remain over their common border and the sharing of oil revenues.
A major sticking point has been the demilitarization of a contested 14-mile strip of land bordering the Darfur region in Sudan and the Bahr el Ghazal region in South Sudan.
“Each government has its own understanding of the scope of the 14-mile area,” South Sudan’s negotiating team said in a statement, which goes on to call Sudan’s position “intractable.”
Last week, South Sudan’s negotiating team claimed that their country had taken a step toward carrying out the border security agreements by withdrawing its own forces from the disputed border.
But South Sudan’s military spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, said no such withdrawal had taken place.
Colonel Aguer said that as of Friday South Sudan’s military had not received an order for the withdrawal of its troops.
“The negotiation is at the political level,” he said. “We are at the operation level. So far nothing has reached” the military’s general headquarters.
The demilitarized border is the first in a series of steps needed to ensure the resumption of South Sudan’s oil production and export through pipelines in Sudan. South Sudan shut down its production last January after accusing Sudan of stealing its oil before it reached export facilities in Port Sudan, on the Red Sea. The shutdown eventually led to open clashes between the armies of the two countries.
In September, the two sides signed an agreement on border security and oil production that was expected to end their disputes. But both sides have been unable to carry out the agreements they previously signed. The presidents of the two countries met early this month and again pledged to carry out the terms of the September deal; the latest round of talks started on Jan. 14.
According to the statement from the South Sudan negotiating team, Sudan has refused to export southern oil until the border security arrangements are fully put in effect. This includes the deployment of more than 800 Ethiopian soldiers along the border to monitor the agreement.
Sudan has also accused South Sudan of supporting rebels in the Sudanese states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile. The rebel groups were part of South Sudan’s army during the 21-year civil war between the two sides.
But since South Sudan’s independence the government maintains that it has cut off support for the rebel groups. Sudan has insisted that South Sudan must stop supporting the rebels before border security arrangements can be put in effect. But South Sudan says that Sudan is trying to delay the negotiations by “imposing new conditions” not in previous agreements.
