South Sudan denies links between delay of president’s visit, Khartoum’s accusations

KHARTOUM. South Sudan has refuted any relationship between the delayed visit of its President Salva Kiir Mayardit to Khartoum and Khartoum’s accusations of Juba being behind a recent rebel attack on areas in western Sudan region.“There is not any relationship between the delaying of the visit and the recent accusations,” Atim Garang, a leading member of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) of South Sudan, told Xinhua on Sunday. “It is clear that there are arrangements which led to the postponement of the visit, and the visit by the Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Ali Karti to Juba carried positive aspects,” he said, noting that if not for Karti’s visit, the postponement of Kiir’s visit to Khartoum would have directly been associated with the recent developments. “It seems the leadership in Sudan is concerned with the developments in Darfur and Kordofan and therefore it saw that President Kiir and Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir are to meet on the sidelines of the forthcoming African Union summit in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa,” he noted.Garang acknowledged that there was a slowdown in the implementation of the cooperation deal signed between Sudan and South Sudan. “There is slowness ... due to the overlapping in the issues which were outstanding between the two countries. However, the implementation is still ok.” He said that work was still ongoing regarding the exportation of South Sudan’s oil through Sudanese pipelines and Port-Sudan harbor besides hard work on other issues, pointing out that “on our part, we are very keen to implement this agreement and sustain peace with Sudan.”Garang denied the accusations by some Sudanese officials of Juba that it was involved in the recent attack by the revolutionary front alliance against areas in western Sudan.”These accusations are baseless. It is apparent that there are conflicts inside the Sudanese leadership, and there are circles which tend to prompt sedition between the two countries to affect on what we have agreed on,” he said.”There are circles inside the Sudanese government that seek to create a crisis in the relationship between Khartoum and Juba whenever the war in Darfur and Kordofan is intensified,” he said, noting that the purpose behind this was to indicate that the opposition receives support from Juba.Garang further denied that Juba provided support for the SPLM/ northern sector which is fighting the government at Blue Nile and South Kordofan area, saying “what is happening at the two areas is internal affairs and we have nothing to do with it.” He explained that 98 percent of South Sudan’s economy depends on oil exports. “We have halted the oil pumping and exporting since November 2011, so does it make sense that only 2 percent is enough to cover the state’s needs and support an external rebellion?”