Sudan, South Sudan leaders discuss border, oil disputes - China Daily

The leaders of Sudan and South Sudan, whose countries have been on the brink of full-scale war, met on Saturday for their first private talks since the fighting, AFP reported.

Sudan's Omar al-Bashir and his South Sudanese counterpart Salva Kiir met late on Saturday night at a luxury hotel and shook hands as they left the room. A member of the Sudan delegation said the two had held hour-long talks.

"They met today and ... it was a good meeting," chief negotiator Pagan Amum told reporters afterward.

The two leaders emerged from the meeting room smiling and shaking hands. They initially met with aides present, and then met one-on-one for the remainder of the hour.

The African Union's Peace and Security Council on Saturday urged Khartoum and Juba to settle their differences on oil and border demarcation before the Aug 2 deadline set by the United Nations.

Amum said he was hopeful a deal could be reached by the looming deadline.

"It is time for a decision," he said.

Talks between Khartoum and Juba on unresolved issues from the 2005 peace accord resumed on Thursday in Bahar Dar in north-western Ethiopia, AU Peace and Security Commissioner Ramtane Lamamra said.

Their African peers had hailed their presence at the earlier gathering, and their pledges to pursue negotiations and not conflict, as an encouraging sign that the two former civil war foes could settle their disputes over border demarcation and sharing of oil revenues.

"Their statements persuaded us that there is good will," Cote d'Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara, who chairs the AU Council, told reporters after the closed-door session.

Breakthrough in Mali

African leaders on Saturday also fleshed out a plan for military intervention in northern Mali, where they said al-Qaida-linked rebels threatened the continent's security.

The African heads of state met at AU headquarters in the Ethiopian capital to discuss ways to resolve the messy aftermaths of military coups this year in Mali and Guinea-Bissau, which have blotted the continent's democratic credentials after advances in stability and governance in recent years.

Besides backing reconciliation between the Sudans, they also threw their weight behind regional efforts to end a military rebellion in east Democratic Republic of Congo that has strained ties between Kinshasa and its Great Lakes neighbor Rwanda.

Focusing on Mali, where al-Qaida-linked local and foreign jihadists have seized control of the largely desert north after hijacking a rebellion by secular Tuareg separatists, the leaders said Africa would "spare no effort" to reunite the country.

They laid out a political and military strategy that aims to secure a full return of power to a civilian government in Mali's south following a March 22 coup, and also foresees an internationally-backed security force whose mission will be to take back the north if the rebels there do not withdraw.

The council condemned terror groups, including Somalia-based Akim and Nigeria-based Boko Haram, for "destroying the historic and cultural heritage" in Northern Mali.

The council also condemned violence against Malian interim President Dioncounda Traore, who is still under medical care in France after having been beaten by protesters who broke into his office on May 21.

The council urged the "creation of an international commission of inquiry" to probe the assault, and to arrest the attackers so as to bring them to justice.

AFP-Reuters-Xinhua

(China Daily 07/16/2012 page11)