KHARTOUM: The presidents of Sudan and South Sudan agreed yesterday to resume work to demarcate their contested border, a dispute that boiled over into armed conflict between the countries in 2012.
The south split from the north in 2011 under a peace agreement ending 22 years of civil war, and the two remain at odds over unresolved issues from the secession, including the frontier.
South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir arrived in Khartoum yesterday for talks that followed a new flare-up of fighting in his country’s 11-month civil war.
Kiir and Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al Bashir said a joint committee would resume meetings to oversee “the demarcation of the buffer zone on the border, with the deployment of troops outside the buffer zone”.
Juba and Khartoum briefly battled for the Heglig oil field on the frontier before Sudan took the area. The conflict led to the signing of agreements in September 2012 appointing a joint body to create a buffer zone between the two, although this was suspended in May. The presidents said in the joint statement read by Foreign Minister Ali Karti that they would again cease “supporting and hosting the rebel groups from both sides”, without giving further details. AFP
