Sudan and South Sudan are trading harsh words as their defense ministers meet with African Union mediators for talks on improving security along their tense border.
Sudan's Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein arrived in Addis Ababa Monday afternoon, 48 hours after the AU mediated talks were to begin. He was met by the high-level panel led by former South African president Thabo Mbeki and members of a South Sudanese ministerial delegation, who had been waiting impatiently for him since Saturday.
The talks were hastily set up last week to implement a joint security arrangement to monitor and investigate cross-border hostilities that threaten to plunge the arch-rivals into war. Each side is accusing the other of starting the fighting last week around the northern oil center of Heglig, which triggered a wave of clashes along the border.
The delay in the start of talks prompted South Sudan's lead negotiator Pagan Amum to accuse Khartoum of stalling while continuing to bomb southern positions. He told reporters Sunday that Sudan had admitted its role as aggressor in the Heglig incident.
Sudan flatly rejected Amum's charges, and independent observers at the talks said they had not heard such an admission by Khartoum.
A Sudanese foreign ministry official, Badreldin Abdalla, pointed to media reports saying South Sudan's President Salva Kiir had taken credit for capturing Heglig.
"President Kiir himself announced that SPLA overcome our forces in Heglig and they occupied Heglig by force," said Abdalla. "He announced that in the media. So how [can it be] that we are in aggression?"
The Sudanese official would not comment on widespread reports that Khartoum's warplanes have been bombing South Sudanese positions daily since the Heglig clash last Monday.
"I am not a military man," added Abdalla. "I cannot confirm it or deny that, but as far as the border is not yet demarcated, and the rebel groups supported by the government of South Sudan used to cross the border and then to flee again back, so it's very difficult in such a situation to give any accurate answer to that."
Meantime, South Sudan's Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin expressed dissatisfaction with the African Union mediation team. Speaking to reporters in Nairobi Monday, he accused the Mbeki panel of taking Khartoum's side on the question of who started the fighting in Heglig.
"To say the truth, we are not satisfied. Why? When the African Union gave a report to the Security Council they portrayed us as if we were the aggressors, that was very disappointing," he said. "And they never mentioned anything about the bombing that the republic of Sudan is doing on the republic of South Sudan.
Benjamin criticized the continental body for failing to condemn Khartoum for the aerial attacks.
"The African Union should be taking its responsibility," he said. "There is nowhere on earth where a sovereign state goes and bombs another sovereign state and everybody is quiet."
The two sides are under fierce international pressure to avoid any actions that could plunge them into an all-out war. Relations have been at rock bottom since January, when South Sudan shut down the oil production that is the lifeline of both country's economies.
But Sudan has continued to pump oil at Heglig, keeping its economy limping along, while the south is in a more difficult state, having lost 98 percent of its income.
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