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From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Sat Oct 16 2010 - 07:37:42 EDT
Sudan rebukes U.N. over border buffer zone plan
Sat Oct 16, 2010 9:03am GMT
* South Sudan fears north preparing for war ahead of vote
* Southern president asked for U.N. buffer zone on border
* Buffer plan a sign of ignorance or interference - army
(Adds quotes, detail, background)
KHARTOUM, Oct 16 (Reuters) - Sudan's army has criticised U.N. moves to set
up buffer zones along the country's north-south border ahead of a
politically sensitive referendum, calling the plan a sign of either
ignorance or interference.
U.N. officials told Reuters on Friday the world body was moving peacekeepers
to hotspot areas to create limited buffer zones because of fears that
conflict may erupt in the build-up to a referendum on whether the south
should declare independence or stay in Sudan.
"The remarks ... on the deployment of a U.N. buffer zone on the border
between north and south reflect nothing but ignorance of the facts on the
course of events in Sudan or harassment aimed at (Sudan's) stability and
integrity," Sudan's army spokesman told the state Suna news agency late on
Friday.
People from Sudan's oil-producing south are now less than three months away
from the scheduled start of the vote, promised in a 2005 peace deal that
ended decades of north-south civil war -- a conflict that left an estimated
2 million dead.
Southerners, who mostly follow traditional beliefs and Christianity, are
widely expected to vote for secession, while the largely Muslim north wants
to keep Africa's largest country united.
The president of the semi-autonomous south, Salva Kiir, last week told
visiting U.N. Security Council envoys he feared the north was moving troops
southwards and preparing for war, members of the delegation said.
Washington's ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice, on Thursday
confirmed Kiir had asked for a U.N.-administered 10-mile (16-km) buffer zone
along the ill-defined border.
U.S. President Barack Obama last week said Sudan was one of his top
priorities, adding he wanted to prevent war and avert the risk of conflict
opening up a new space for terrorist activity in the region.
Army spokesman Al-Sawarmi Khaled told Suna on Friday there was no threat to
southerners' safety and that Sudan's armed forces could deal with any
security incidents. He added the U.N. peacekeepers in the country already
had their own job to do, monitoring the roll out of the 2005 peace accord.
The U.N. already has 10,000 peacekeepers in Sudan, not counting its joint
mission with the African Union in Darfur, most of them stationed in the
south and former civil war battle ground areas.
A U.N. official told Reuters the mission had already deployed more
peacekeepers to Abyei, a central oil-producing area claimed by the north and
the south.
The 2005 peace accord promised Abyei residents a referendum on whether to
join the north or south by the same official deadline as the southern vote
-- Jan. 9, 2011.
The north and south remain at loggerheads over which of the communities in
the area count as Abyei residents with the right to vote. The latest round
of talks, brokered by the U.S. Sudan envoy Scott Gration, ended without
agreement on Tuesday.
Northern and southern troops have already clashed in Abyei since the 2005
peace deal. (Reporting by Andrew Heavens, editing by Mark Trevelyan)
C Thomson Reuters 2010 All rights reserved
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