South Sudan accuses Bashir of plot, suspends talks

South Sudan accused Sudanese President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir of arming militias to overthrow the south's government before the secession of the oil-producing region in July, and suspended talks with Khartoum. The accusation on Saturday came hours after militias launched a pre-dawn attack on Malakal, the capital of the south's oil-producing Upper Nile state, killing an unknown number of civilians.
Senior southern official Pagan Amum said the south would suspend talks with Bashir's ruling National Congress Party (NCP) about plans for the secession and would look into alternative routes for sending its oil to market, away from the north. Southerners overwhelmingly voted to declare independence from the north in a January referendum promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north/south civil war.
"We in SPLM (the south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement) have details of a plan by the NCP to overthrow the government of south Sudan before July," Amum, SPLM secretary general, told journalists. "The NCP has been creating, training, supplying and arming militia groups in southern Sudan with the aim to destabilise and overthrow the government. This plan is being overseen by the President of the republic Omar Hassan al-Bashir himself."
Amum added southern President Salva Kiir had phoned him and asked the SPLM's negotiating team to look into finding alternative routes for the south's oil - the lifeblood of the economies of both north and south Sudan. "(Kiir) has directed us in the negotiating team to look into a possibility of stopping the export of oil of south Sudan through the north in July and see possibilities of alternative routes of transport other than northern Sudan," said Amum.
It was unclear how the south, almost entirely dependent on oil revenues, would manage to find alternative routes. The only pipeline currently runs through the north and it would take years to build another line via Kenya or Uganda. Any shutdown would have a serious impact on the north's economy which, up to now, has been receiving half of the revenues from southern oil and was hoping to negotiate continued payments after secession. Amum said the SPLM had complained to the United Nations Security Council about a series of militia raids in its territory which it were being backed by Khartoum.