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Africa Horn
Sudan declares emergency in border states
2012-04-30
KHARTOUM/MOSCOW: Sudan declared a state of emergency along its border with South Sudan yesterdday, in a move that imposes a trade embargo on the South and suspends the constitution, official news agency SUNA said.
It's certainly an emergency to them...
President Omar Bashir issued a resolution declaring the emergency in the border states of South Kordofan, White Nile and Sennar, it said. The measure follows a month of border fighting with South Sudan, which separated last July after a peace deal ended one of Africa's longest civil wars.

An emergency has already been in effect for almost a decade in Darfur, along the western border with South Sudan, while a similar status took effect in Blue Nile state last September when an ethnic insurgency began.

Trade across the frontier has unofficially been banned since South Sudan's independence but the emergency formalizes that prohibition. BashirÂ’s resolution "gives the right to the president and anyone with his mandate" to establish special courts, in consultation with the chief justice, SUNA said.
This means South Sudan needs to build a pipeline to the Indian Ocean via Kenya. Start talking...
The measures come amid heightened nationalist feelings in Sudan after South Sudan occupied the north's main Heglig oil field for 10 days, a move which coincided with Sudanese air strikes against the South. It was the most serious fighting since the South's independence, and raised fears of a wider war.

Sudan declared on April 20 that its troops had forced the Southern soldiers out of Heglig, but the South said it withdrew of its own accord. During the Heglig occupation Bashir threatened to overthrow South Sudan's "insect" government.

Separately, Sudan's foreign minister meets his Russian counterpart today in hopes of securing the traditional ally's backing in its bloody territorial and oil dispute with the newly independent South.
In return Russia gets the oil concession. Nice...
The talks follow Sudan's rejection on Saturday of an African Union decision to ask the UN Security Council to endorse its call for the two Sudans to quickly halt hostilities and complete a peace pact within three months.Russia, which wields veto power on the Security Council, generally resists any sanctions against sides involved in regional or internal conflicts such as the one now raging in Syria.

But the United States submitted a draft resolution last week providing for additional steps that include sanctions should the two sides fail to abide by the African Union plan.

Analysts said Sudanese Foreign Minister Ali Karti will be keen to win his counterpart Sergei Lavov's support at the United Nations should the US resolution go to a vote.

"Russia will speak out against sanctions. It made its position clear quite a long time ago," said Greater Middle East Conflict Analysis Centre director Alexander Shumilin."But speaking out against sanctions does not necessarily mean vetoing them," he said in reference to Russia's possible abstention in a move that would let the sanctions pass.
Posted by:Steve White

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