Pretoria – The United States has pledged full backing for South Sudan ahead of Saturday’s independence celebrations, but has warned that the situation in that country is still fragile.
US Ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice – who will lead a high-level a delegation to the July 9 festivities in the southern capital, Juba – told media at a briefing on Thursday that the parties need to urgently resolve the remaining issues.
Rice listed outstanding comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) issues, including the disputed status of Abyei and other north-south border areas; citizenship issues in those regions, and a mechanism to share oil revenue between the Sudanese government in Khartoum and the soon-to-be Republic of South Sudan.
“It’s critical that the parties cooperate on such key issues as oil and citizenship in order to avoid major economic shocks or social upheaval. Allowing these issues – including the final status of Abyei – to linger without resolution for any length of time could swiftly destabilise the future relationship between these two states,” she said.
Maintaining a UN peacekeeping presence is “vital” to peace and humanitarian effort and that intensive diplomacy is underway at the United Nations to try to persuade Khartoum to drop its demand.
“It’s vital that the United Nations be allowed to maintain a full peacekeeping presence in these areas for an additional period of time in order to facilitate the distribution of humanitarian aid, support the implementation of any cessation of hostilities agreement and vitally to protect civilians,” Rice told reporters.
Assistant Secretary of State Johnnie Carson, the State Department’s top official for Africa, said Khartoum needed to follow through on the agreement to improve conditions in the western region of Darfur, before Washington could move on improving bilateral ties.
“We are working as hard as we can with the authorities in Khartoum to make progress on these issues, but we are not yet at the end of the line,” Carson said.
Carson said the United States wants good relations with both states and wants them to be viable and good neighbours to one another.
“The long-term political and economic success of the south is dependent upon having a strong, politically stable and economically viable partner in the north,” Carson said, adding that the long-term viability of Khartoum’s government is dependent upon having a politically stable and economically prosperous partner in the south.
“Both of these countries will, in fact, remain very, very dependent upon one another for a long period of time.”
Washington is also working to free the new country from sanctions imposed on Khartoum, although it was unclear how this might apply to South Sudan’s oil sector, which produces 75 percent of overall Sudanese production, but exports through northern ports and refineries.
Oil-producing South Sudan is due to declare independence on July 9 from Sudan – a split approved in a referendum promised in a 2005 north-south peace deal to end two decades of conflict. – BuaNews
