Bashir says tensions with South could spark war

Sudan’s President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said on Friday tensions with South Sudan over oil transit payments could lead to war, stepping up the rhetoric in a row over crude reserves between the two countries.Asked in an interview with state television whether war could break out with South Sudan, Bashir said: “There is a possibility.”He said Sudan wanted peace but added: “We will go to war if we are forced to go to war.”“If there will be war after the loss of oil it will be a war of attrition. But it will be a war of attrition hitting them before us,” he said.Sudan is locked in a row with South Sudan over sharing oil revenues. South Sudan, home to substantial crude reserves, split away as an independent country in July, under a 2005 peace agreement.The landlocked South still needs to export its crude through the north’s port and pipelines. But the two countries went their separate ways without agreeing how much South Sudan was going to pay Sudan to use its oil infrastructure.The crisis came to a head when Khartoum said in January it had seized some southern oil as compensation for what it called unpaid fees, and South Sudan responded by shutting down oil production.Bashir on Friday accused Juba of shutting down the oil flow to provoke a collapse of the Sudanese government. Khartoum has been fighting a severe economic crisis since the loss of southern oil, sparking small protests against high food inflation.Bashir also said his southern counterpart Salva Kirr had refused to reach a deal about oil payments at a meeting last week on the sidelines of the African Union in Addis Ababa.