US envoy seeks resolution in Sudan Abyei region

May 28, 2008 (KHARTOUM) — The US special envoy for Sudan vowed on Wednesday to press diplomatic efforts towards resolving a brewing crisis between the country’s north and south sparked by fighting in an oil flashpoint.

Speaking upon arrival in Khartoum, Richard Williamson said he would use his upcoming meetings while in Sudan to raise the issue of Abyei, whose main town was levelled in fighting between government forces and southern ex-foes.

He also said he intended to hold talks with the south Sudan leader and first vice president in the central government, Salva Kiir, and travel to the war-racked region of Darfur, in western Sudan.

For his part, Kiir accused government armed forces of sending reinforcements into Abyei, where his Sudan People’s Liberation Army has fled further south, in comments before the legislative assembly in the southern capital Juba.

“SAF forces have been building up in Abyei area particularly along the roads leading to northern Sudan … (We) are committed to peace but shall retain the right of protecting the people of southern Sudan and their property,” he said.

“I again call upon President (Omar al-) Bashir as the commander in chief of the SAF forces to order for a pullout of that Brigade 31 in Abyei to enable the JIUs (joint northern-southern units) deployed in the area to restore peace.”

Kiir described the Abyei crisis as a violation of Sudan’s three-year Comprehensive Peace Agreement and a “crime against humanity”.

Williamson jetted into the crisis one day after Kiir’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement said it would boycott Sudanese-US talks to normalise relations on the grounds as a response to the “destruction” of Abyei.

“We are only going to resume participating in this dialogue until there is a way out, until the Abyei problem is resolved and the Abyei protocol is going to be implemented,” Yaser Arman, SPLM deputy secretary general, said on Tuesday.

Under a 2005 deal, Abyei was accorded a special status and was to be governed by a joint administration until referenda in 2011 decided whether it remained part of north or went south, or whether the south would secede.

President Beshir’s National Congress Party has pinned the blame on the south for allegedly unilaterally appointing its own Abyei governor, Edward Lino, without their approval in the weeks leading up to the fighting.

On Monday, SPLM secretary general Pagan Amum said Sudan was on the verge of civil war over the dispute in the border zone between north and south, whose estimated half a billion dollar oil wealth lies at the heart of the troubles.

UN officials warn that up to 90,000 people could have been displaced by two rounds of fighting this month that flattened Abyei’s once bustling main town.

The United Nations warns that the conflict could sink the three-year peace process, to which US mediation was key, that ended Africa’s longest-running civil war between north and south Sudan killed more than 1.5 million people.

(AFP)