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UN extends southern Sudan peacekeeping mission
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May 1, 2008 - 8:52:01 PM

UN extends southern Sudan peacekeeping mission

By EDITH M. LEDERER – 16 hours ago

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to extend the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Sudan and called for demarcation of the contested oil-rich border region between the north and south.

Some 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are enforcing a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum — but peace remains fragile.

The disputed region in southern Kordofan province, where four days of fighting between south Sudanese troops and Arab tribesman ended Tuesday, is claimed by north and south, like the nearby oil rich region of Abyei. Both have become potential flashpoints that could wreck the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

In a report to the Security Council earlier this month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recent clashes and tensions in the Abyei area "represent a potential threat to the agreement" and to the national unity government in Khartoum that now includes members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement which led the war in the south.

In the resolution adopted Wednesday, the Security Council called on all parties to cooperate fully with U.N. peacekeepers in the Abyei region, "without prejudice to the final agreement on the actual borders between the two sides." It also urged the U.N. mission to consult with the parties and deploy personnel to the Abyei region, including areas of Kordofan, "as appropriate."

The resolution requests the U.N. mission to provide technical and logistical support to help the parties demarcate the north-south border, in accordance with the 2005 agreement.

There is also a joint U.N.-African Union peacekeeping force also deployed in Darfur, in Sudan's west, to monitor a separate conflict there. More than 200,000 people have died and 2.5 million have been forced from their homes amid four years of fighting between local rebels and government-allied janjaweed militias in Darfur.