* South Sudan seceded from Sudan last year
* Analysts fear full-blown Sudan-South Sudan war
By Michelle Nichols
UNITED NATIONS, April 4 (Reuters) – U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon
pleaded with Sudan and South Sudan on Wednesday to withdraw
troops and police from the disputed Abyei region amid
international fears that repeated border clashes between the
East African neighbors could escalate to war.
Sudan and South Sudan both claim Abyei, a border region
containing fertile grazing land, which Khartoum took in May last
year – triggering the exodus of tens of thousands of civilians –
after a southern attack on an army convoy.
“The continued presence of unauthorized security forces
within the Abyei area is fundamentally at odds with the spirit
of constructive dialogue and mutual accommodation,” U.N.
Secretary-General Ban said in a report to the U.N. Security
Council on the situation in the Abyei over the past two months.
“I would like once again to appeal to the government of
Sudan and the government of South Sudan to withdraw their armed
forces and police from the Abyei area,” he said in the report.
South Sudan seceded from Sudan in July, six months after a
referendum agreed under a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of
civil war that killed more than 2 million people. Such a vote
was originally also planned in Abyei but was never held as both
sides have been unable to agree on who can participate.
There are 3,800 U.N. peacekeepers in Abyei after the
Security Council authorized the deployment in June last year.
Continued…
