First Vice President and chairman of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) Salva Kiir addresses a past news conference in Khartoum. Photo/FILE
The leadership of South Sudan has downplayed fears of fresh conflict over oil reserves within its territory after the planned 2011 referendum to decide whether southerners will formally secede from their counterparts in the north.
The ruling party in South Sudan, the Sudanese Peoples Liberation Movement (SPLM), said on Wednesday it would front for a policy that would ensure wealth tapped from the resource benefited all.
“We will work to ensure that the policy of greed does not apply as has been the case with the government in the North,” SPLM secretary-general Pagan Amum told a news conference in Nairobi. “If we become independent the North would have to learn to request because if they choose to wage war they lose,” he said.
The two sides split the revenue from oil reserves found in the southern territory, but no agreement has been made about whether revenue-sharing would continue in case of Southern Sudan independence.
Some analysts have said that oil wealth could spark off a fresh round of conflict arguing that the north could face serious budgetary deficits in the event the South assumed control of the oil revenues.
Mr Amum, however, said the matter would be resolved amicably through fair policy arrangements.
“For sure the South has survived with no oil revenue and the North also has other alternative revenue sources including arable land and oil as well,” he said. “ We are keen to see the north also viable.”
The official spoke a day after Kenya and other regional countries under the umbrella of the Inter Governmental Authority on Development (Igad) resolved to push for speedy implementation of all protocols outlined in the comprehensive peace agreement (CPA) in Sudan saying uncertainty in the oil rich nation posed a threat to their own economies and peace.
The Igad leaders also demanded that the long-running boundary dispute in the oil-producing Abyei region be resolved fast owing to the building tension ahead of the country’s elections next month and the 2011 referendum.
Both north and south Sudan have claimed Abyei, a central area hugging the country’s north-south border, for decades.
The definition of Abyei’s borders was so sensitive that it was left undecided in the CPA.
The Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague, however, ruled to readjust boundaries drawn up by the 2005 CPA panel, pulling in its borders to the north, east and west.
Regional leaders further sought for mobilisation of development assistance to help rebuild parts of Sudan, especially the south, impoverished by decades of war noting that the current state of economic and social imbalance was a potential source of fresh conflict.
The slow implementation of pacts reached under the CPA is a major concern for the people of Southern Sudan, according to President Salva Kiir who attended the Igad Heads of State summit in Nairobi.
“I would like to inform you that had it not been for patience and commitment of our people, Sudan would have gone back to war,” Mr Kiir told the summit while commenting about the hitches that had prevented the full implementation of protocol under the CPA.
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