North, south Sudan to pull troops

Leaders of northern and southern Sudan agreed Monday to demilitarize the disputed border region of Abyei after an incursion by northern forces, which still occupy the region.

The two sides signed a pact in the Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa, where former South African President Thabo Mbeki acted as a mediator. He told reporters that Ethiopian peacekeepers would be dispatched under the U.N. flag to patrol the oil-rich area. The exact number will be decided at a U.N. meeting in New York, he said.

Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi said his country was ready to send peacekeepers in order to prevent a new north-south war over Abyei.

In New York, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice called for swift implementation of the demilitarization agreement.

“We welcome the news that the parties have just signed an agreement,” she said in remarks to the U.N. Security Council.

After decades of fighting, southern Sudan, which holds the bulk of the nation’s oil reserves, is set to gain independence on July 9. Last month, northern troops and tanks streamed into the contested Abyei region, sending tens of thousands of civilians fleeing south.

Last week, Sudanese President Omar Hussein Ahmed Bashir agreed to pull back his troops, but upon his return from Ethiopia, he initially denied an agreement had been reached. Bashir, wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of war crimes in Sudan’s Darfur region, said last week that the incursion was aimed at protecting civilians in the disputed territory.

Aldirderi Mohammed Ahmed, head of the Abyei branch of the north’s ruling National Congress Party, said the agreement Monday fulfilled government demands that the south also withdraw its forces from the region.

Still unsettled are the boundaries for the region and a formula for sharing oil revenue after the mostly animist and Christian south voted in a March referendum to secede.

Thomas Wani, a leading figure in the south’s Southern People’s Liberation Movement, said his party welcomed the agreement but was skeptical because of the north’s history of broken promises.

“I really don’t trust the NCP,” he said, referring to the ruling party in Khartoum. “They agree today but they revoke it tomorrow.”

Elsewhere in Sudan, heavy fighting was reported between northern and southern forces in Southern Kordofan, the province that includes Abyei.

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Ahmed is a special correspondent.