North and south Sudan agree on demilitarized zone to be despite deadlock over Abyei

North and south Sudan have agreed to create a demilitarized zone to bolster security along their border, despite a deadlock over the disputed region of Abyei, the African Union said on Tuesday.

The agreement, signed in Addis Ababa on Monday evening, established a joint political and security mechanism, headed by the defense ministers, “to ensure that the two parties can maintain stable and secure relations,” according to the Agence-France Presse.


“The agreement also establishes a common border zone between north and south Sudan, which is to be demilitarized and jointly monitored and patrolled,” said the AU, which is mediating negotiations ahead of full independence for the south on July 9.

The news of the accord came 10 days after the northern army occupied Abyei in response to a deadly attack on their troops in the contested border region.

The army’s move was condemned by world powers, which have warned it threatens peace between the former civil war enemies.

South Sudan, following a referendum, is scheduled to become an independent country in less than six weeks, but issues such as the position of the common border and sharing the proceeds of oil fields with the north have yet to be settled.

Khartoum seized the disputed oil-rich Abyei region on May 21, causing tens of thousands of people to flee and raising fears the two sides could return to full-blown conflict, according to Reuters.

On Monday, Sudan’s vice president Riek Machar agreed with his northern counterpart Ali Osman Taha to form a joint committee aimed at resolving the Abyei crisis.

But Mr. Taha rejected southern demands that the army withdraw, saying it would only do so when a political solution had been reached.

Sudan’s volatile north-south border runs to more than 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles), but its demarcation, along with the future status of Abyei, are among the key outstanding issues that the two sides have been struggling to resolve ahead of July.

Some 20 percent of the border has yet to be agreed on.

For all but 11 years since Sudan became independent in 1956, a civil war has been fought in the country of 42 million people, Africa’s largest by land mass. Abyei contributes more than a quarter of Sudan’s daily oil production of 480,000 barrels. Sudan’s proven crude oil reserves are nearly 2 billion barrels.

The south is important to the north because that’s where most of the country’s oil is produced. But refineries are in the north, as is the main pipeline carry oil for exports.

The Abyei Area covers 10,460 kilometers in the State of Northern Bahr al-Ghazal in South Sudan.

Abyei is contested between the regions Ngok Dinka people, who are settled in the area and consider themselves southerners, and Misseriya nomads who herd their cattle south in the dry season and are supported by the Khartoum government.

The region postponed a vote, originally scheduled for January, on whether to join the south or remain a special administrative region in the north because of disagreements on who was eligible to vote.

Abyei produces less than 2,500 barrels of oil a day, according to Sudan’s Oil Ministry.

Fighting in the area three years ago between the armies of northern and Southern Sudan killed 89 people and forced more than 90,000 people to flee their homes, according to the UN.

(Abeer Tayel, an editor at Al Arabiya