JUBA, Sudan (AFP) — Khartoum has missed a new deadline to withdraw its troops from south Sudan, flouting a deal that saw former rebels rejoin the government last week, a senior ex-rebel commander said on Wednesday.
"They have not moved up to now," Major General Mai Hoth, deputy chief of staff of the southern former rebel Sudan People's Liberation Army said. "They haven't given us a concrete reason."
The promise to pull northern troops out of the southern autonomous region by the end of 2007 was part of an agreement that paved the way for the former rebels to rejoin the national unity government on December 27, ending a two-month crisis.
The rebels' withdrawal from the cabinet in October was the worst crisis to hit a 2005 peace deal that ended Africa's longest-running civil war. An estimated two million people were killed and another six million displaced in the two-decade-long conflict.
Khartoum's failure to meet an earlier deadline for the troop pullout was one of the key reasons cited by the former rebels for quitting the government.
Under the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which created a southern autonomous government and two separate armies, northern troops should have withdrawn from the south by July 9, 2007.
However, the north had only moved two-thirds of its forces by that date, according to the United Nations, setting off a protracted war of words that culminated in the south recalling its ministers from the unity government.
Sudanese President Omar al-Beshir insists 85 percent of northern troops have withdrawn from the south, where the Sudanese army says only 3,600 northern soldiers remain.
The south and United Nations officials have disputed this figure.
Major General Hoth said there are about 18,000 northern troops in the south. Of these, 15,000 are in Unity State and 3,000 are in Upper Nile State, two oil producing states at the north-south border.
The north has in the past argued that its army needed to remain in the south to protect the oil wells.
More than 80 percent of the country's oil is in the south.
Under the CPA, the two sides should have formed a joint north-south force to patrol the oil areas, but the force was not fully operational by the time the south pulled out of government.
Southern army spokesman Major General Kuol Deim blamed this failure on the Sudanese army's refusal to contribute troops to the force.
Hoth said he expected an explanation for the delay from northern officials during a meeting of the Joint Defence Board on January 5 in Khartoum.
"We are going to review the deployment," said Hoth. "From there they will tell us why they haven't moved."
Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved. More »
