(Reuters/NAN)
Sudan’s intelligence chief has warned South Sudan against hostile moves from its territory, saying any incursion by rebel forces based in its neighbour would be treated as an “assault’’ by Juba.
Mohamed Atta named two camps in neighbouring South Sudan’s Northern Bahr el Ghazal state and urged Juba to disarm the rebels there.
Each side has accused the other of harbouring rebels seeking to destabilise the other, but tensions have spiked again since the collapse of African Union-brokered talks in Khartoum on Dec. 9.
Atta said that the rebels were from the Justice and Equality Movement, an armed group that emerged during the war in Sudan’s western Darfur region.
Meanwhile, fighting peaked there in 2003 and 2004, law and order has not returned and clashes between insurgents and government forces have continued despite a large United Nations-African Union peacekeeping force.
“We say to the South Sudan government that peace is better for you and better for us and ask them for reciprocity in not harbouring any armed movements,’’he said.
Reports say relations between the two states have been troubled since the oil-rich south seceded in 2011.
Both governments have been unable through the AU-backed negotiations process, to reach an agreement on disputed sections of 1,800 km border.
Fighting along the frontier came to the brink of full-scale war in 2012.
