CAIRO: The government of South Sudan had an extensive meeting with the Egyptian Foreign Minister, Kamel Amr. Most analysts on the region consider the Sudan and South Sudan ostensibly at war. Speaking to reporters after meeting the President of South Sudan, Salva Kiir, the Egyptian Foreign Minister said he had come to urge both countries to cease their hostilities. “I have come to listen and learn from the leaderships of the two countries. This was why I was in Khartoum yesterday and held talks with senior government officials there. I met President Bashir and some of his cabinet members and advisors over the current developments. I listened to him and I came to here to meet and listen to the leadership of this country,” Amr said, according to reports in The Sudan Tribune. At the same press conference, South Sudan's Foreign Minister, Nhial Deng Nhial, said his country welcomed the Egyptian initiative to visit the two countries to listen to them and see how best they can work together with others to resolve disputes through peaceful dialogue. He said South Sudan had “always been prioritizing peaceful dialogue.” Nhial then announced Kiir's response to the Egypt's request to release the Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) prisoners of war. “The Sudan People's Liberation Army [SPLA] conforms to the United Nations Covenant on prisoners of war. This has been demonstrated even during the war [1983-2005] we have released 300,000 Sudanese prisoners of war in good health”, he said. Speaking at a separate press briefing on Monday, South Sudan's Minister of Information and Broadcasting, Barnaba Marial Benjamin said his country respects international law. “We are not an isolate of our own. We are part of the world and this is why our president responded to the calls including pleas by the Egyptian government to release prisoners of war to their families,” Marial told reporters. Marial said the prisoners of war are now ready to be released in collaboration with the Egyptian government and their return would be facilitated by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Bol Makueng, secretary of information at the secretariat of the country's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) said in another interview that the prisoners are in good health. He asked the international community to pressure the Khartoum government to “observe human rights in their treatment of South Sudanese in Khartoum and also to produce prisoners of war they have captured in the fighting.” The war between North and South Sudan ignited last week when South Sudan seized the oil-producing town of Heglig. Heglig is extremely important to Khartoum because it represents roughly half of the Sudan's 115,000 barrel per day (bpd) oil output and the fighting has stopped production there. With South Sudan's secession last year the Sudan lost 75 percent of the country's oil production. Khartoum was hoping that transit fees on South Sudan's estimated 350,000 bpd output would help ease the loss. In an attempt to recoup the financial losses, Khartoum imposed a heavy tax on South Sudan's oil traveling through its pipeline to Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Those transit fees account for 36 percent of the Sudan's budget. There are no other options for moving the oil, and when the land-locked South Sudan suspected Khartoum was siphoning the oil and asking for too much money, they responded by stopping oil extraction altogether. 98 percent of South Sudan's revenue is from oil; they are also considered one of the most under-developed regions in the world due to half a century of warfare with Khartoum. The Heglig oil fields, are allocated to the Sudan, and South Sudan shocked the region when they moved last week to take possession of them. The United Nations and the African Union demanded a withdrawal, however, South Sudan has asked for an international peace-keeping force to take its place, which is not going over well. South Sudan maintains the region has been used for launching attacks into their sovereign territory. Al-Sawarmi Khalid, spokesman for the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF), said, “We have not carried out attacks into South Sudan.” SPLA spokesperson Philip Aguer insisted Heglig is part of South Sudan.
