Bashir Declares State of Emergency on South Sudan Border, Plus Trade Embargo - About - News Issues

Tensions are getting higher between Sudan and the newly independent South Sudan, which declared its independence after an overwhelming majority approved it in a referendum and will celebrate its first birthday on July 9. From Al-Jazeera:

Sudan has declared a state of emergency along its border with South Sudan, in a move that imposes a trade embargo on the South and suspends the constitution, official news agency SUNA said.

President Omar al-Bashir issued a resolution on Sunday declaring the emergency in border districts of South Kordofan state, White Nile and Sennar states, it said.

...Trade across the border has unofficially been banned since South Sudan's independence but the emergency formalises that prohibition.

Bashir's resolution "gives the right to the president and anyone with his mandate" to establish special courts, in consultation with the chief justice, SUNA said.

The state news agency als reported that the governor of White Nile state on the borderhas set a one-week deadline for 12,000 ethnic South Sudanese gathered south of Khartoum to leave the country.

"The wali (governor) of White Nile state, Yusuf al-Shambali, confirmed that he has set May 5 as the deadline for the Southerners waiting in Kosti," a way station south of Khartoum, it said.

The last thing the region needs is more civil war: About two million people were killed in civil warfare between 1983 and 2005. An emergency has already been in effect for a decade in Darfur -- the region in which Bashir is accused of committing war crimes by the International Criminal Court.

South Sudan President Salva Kiir already said last week that Sudan had declared war on his country.

(Photo by LIU JIN - Pool/Getty Images)