* Juba files complaint against Sudan over Abyei, attacks
By Aaron Maasho
ADDIS ABABA, June 1 (Reuters) - Sudan said it had pulled its police forces
from a disputed border region, removing a possible obstacle to troubled
peace talks with its neighbour South Sudan which also claims the fertile
area.
The ownership of Abyei is a major bone of contention between the African
countries which came close to war last month after border fighting escalated
- the worst violence since South Sudan seceded last year under a 2005 peace
agreement.
Sudan said on Thursday it had withdrawn its army from Abyei but would keep
police forces in the region, defying a call by U.N. Secretary-General Ban
Ki-moon.
On Friday it appeared to go further. "The redeployment of the remaining
police forces, numbering 169 people, outside the administrative borders of
Abyei was completed this afternoon," Sudanese state news agency SUNA
reported, citing Sudan's military spokesman.
Sudan had seized Abyei a year ago, triggering the exodus of tens of
thousands of civilians, after an attack on a military convoy blamed by the
United Nations on southern forces.
South Sudan said on Friday it had filed a complaint against Sudan at the
U.N. Security Council, asking it to impose sanctions on Khartoum over its
presence in Abyei and repeated air strikes against its territory.
"The complaint makes it clear that while (South Sudan) has complied fully
with each of the demands (on Abyei) ... the government of Sudan has not
reciprocated and continues to be blatantly in violation of the U.N. Security
Council's demands," South Sudan's government said in a statement.
The complaint also listed more than 100 attacks on villages and towns in the
South Sudanese states of Unity, Upper Nile, Jonglei, Western Bahr el Ghazal
and Northern Bahr el Ghazal since November, according to the statement.
Juba has repeatedly accused Khartoum of bombing its border states, some of
which are oil-producing. Claims are hard to verify as the joint border area
is difficult to access.
TROUBLED TALKS
The two countries returned to peace talks in Ethiopia this week, under
pressure from the African Union and the United Nations.
A Sudanese official attending AU-sponsored talks between the neighbours
denied the claims, saying his country has only targeted rebels within its
territory.
The U.N. Security Council has urged the neighbours to cease all hostilities
or face sanctions. A separate U.N. resolution demanded both sides to pull
out troops from Abyei, which has fertile grazing land and small oil
reserves.
About 3,800 Ethiopian U.N. peacekeepers are currently deployed in Abyei.
South Sudan says it has withdrawn its forces from Abyei but an official told
Reuters this week it had kept 20 unarmed police behind.
Diplomats see no quick breakthrough as both sides are at loggerheads over a
long list of disagreements - from marking the disputed border and deciding
on the status of Abyei to agreeing on oil export fees for South Sudan.
South Sudanese overwhelmingly voted to secede from Sudan in a referendum
last year, promised in the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement that ended
decades of north-south civil war.
The new, landlocked South inherited most of the old united Sudan's known oil
reserves. But it shut down production in January to stop Khartoum taking oil
for what the latter called unpaid export fees. The shutdown has hurt both
oil-dependant economies. (Additional reporting by Alexander Dziadosz;
Editing by Andrew Heavens)
C Thomson Reuters 2012 All rights reserved
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Received on Fri Jun 01 2012 - 21:22:59 EDT
