SPLA has agreed to disband and instead form units in the new military of
southern Sudan. The UN has sought to facilitate the process as well as
implement a 2005 peace agreement that ended more than 20 years of civil war
between the Khartoum regime and the south.
The UN said southern Sudanese soldiers and police entered the Abyei
region on July 18 in violation of an agreement with Khartoum. Qazi has urged
the southern Sudanese force. including key commanders who had directed
previous fighting in May 2008, to withdraw.
"Their presence, if confirmed, could be particularly destructive," Qazi
said.
The Khartoum regime has vowed to repel any southern attempt to take over
Abyei. In 2008, the central Sudanese military drove out southern troops in a
battle over Abyei in which at least 22 northern soldiers were killed.
On July 22, the question of Abyei was expected to be decided by the
Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague. Both Khartoum and the southern
government have pledged to honor the decision.
"There are no forces for the SPLA or southern police in the Abyei area,"
Pagan Amum, a leading south Sudanese politician, said.
Under the 2005 accord, the north and south promised to share energy
revenues and hold elections in April 2010. But officials in the south said
implementation of the agreement has been halting.
In an unrelated development a Sudanese rebel group, Justice and Equality
Movement, has released 60 Sudanese Army soldiers. The release was said to be
one of a series of goodwill measures between JEM, which operates in
Darfour, and Khartoum. JEM said it was holding additional Sudanese Army
captives.
"Although the ICRC did not participate in the negotiations, we agreed on
purely humanitarian grounds, at the request of both the Sudanese authorities
and the JEM, to serve as a neutral intermediary in the transfer of 55 armed
forces personnel and five police personnel to the Sudanese authorities,"
Jordi Raich, head of the ICRC delegation in Sudan, said.
