Egyptian officials due in Sudan to ease north-south tension

October 16, 2007 (CAIRO) — A high level Egyptian delegation will go to Sudan to try to resolve escalating tensions between former southern Sudan rebels and the national government, Egypt’s foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, said Tuesday.

Aboul Gheit said the influential head of the Egyptian intelligence, Omar Suleiman, would join him in the delegation due to head Wednesday for Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, and Juba – the capital of autonomous southern Sudan.

“We hope that this will serve the cause of stability and peace in Sudan,” Aboul Gheit told reporters.

The announcement came as Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir agreed to meet Tuesday in Khartoum with a southern delegation headed by Riek Mashar, the deputy leader of the Sudan Peoples’ Liberation Movement.

Last week the former rebels recalled their ministers from the national Sudanese government to protest peace treaty violations. The move was seen as dangerous blow to a fragile 2005 peace deal that ended two decades of north-south civil war.

The SPLM accuses Khartoum of multiple breaches to the 2005 deal, including not sharing the country’s oil wealth as agreed, not pulling troops out of southern Sudan, and remilitarizing contested border zones where the main oil reserves are located.

The 2005 agreement ended two decades of civil war between the Arab and Muslim-dominated north and the mainly Christian and animist black southerners. Africa’s bloodiest conflict, the war caused the death of some 2 million people.

Under the peace agreement, southerners hold about a third of the positions in Sudan’s government. Prominent officials include Sudanese Vice president Salva Kiir, also president of southern Sudan, and Lam Akol, Sudan’s minister of foreign affairs.

Egypt, the regional heavyweight, expressed concern over the rising tensions in its war-torn southern neighbor, which controls the flow of the Nile, and is also battling a separate rebellion in its western Darfur region, where more than 200,000 people have been killed since 2003.

A flare-up between north and south would could plunge the whole country in chaos and further worsen the suffering in Darfur.

The Arab League has also offered mediation.

(AP)