Information service of the Pontifical Mission Societies since 1927
Juba (Agenzia Fides) - The governments of Sudan and Southern Sudan will meet tomorrow, January 17, in Addis Ababa, in Ethiopia, for a new round of negotiations to resolve the issues left pending after the independence of the South, sanctioned in July 2011. Among the issues on the agenda are the issues of oil, border disputes, the area of Abyei (yet to be assigned to the North or South) and the question of nationalities of south Sudanese who live in the north.
As regards to oil, extracted in the south and exported through a pipeline passing through the north, Khartoum asks Juba a tax of $35 per barrel of oil exported through its infrastructure. The Government of Southern Sudan, following the advice of an expert committee of the African Union, prefers to offer Khartoum prefers a financial package of $ 2.6 billion and pay a tax of just 74 cents for each barrel of oil.
Last week, the government of Khartoum placed an order to a Chinese company to export 650,000 barrels of southern Sudan crude oil without the permission of the Government of the South The load has a value of over $ 650 million. A spokesman in Khartoum said that the oil was seized as a form of compensation for the use on behalf of South Sudan, of Sudan's oil infrastructure.
Another delicate issue concerns the legal status of more than 700,000 South Sudanese living in Sudan, which in April are likely to be expelled. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, last week asked the two governments to negotiate a humane solution to transfer the southern Sudanese who want to return to South Sudan, while urged Khartoum to issue legal documents in color to those who prefer to remain in Sudan. (L.M.) (Agenzia Fides 16/01/2012)
