Sudan and South Sudan will remain locked in conflict despite reaching a border security deal last week, leading Sudanese opposition figure Hassan Turabi said. The two African countries have been wrangling over contested areas along the border and other issues since breaking apart last year under a peace deal that ended decades of civil war. Under pressure from the United Nations and African Union, the two agreed to set up a demilitarised border zone and resume oil exports from the landlocked South after Juba shut them down in a row with Khartoum over transit fees. But the deal failed to resolve problems like where to draw the final border, what to do with the disputed Abyei area and how to end rebellions in two Sudanese border states which Khartoum says Juba is backing, Turabi said.
Turabi, one of Sudan’s most influential politicians throughout the 1990s, dismissed the suggestion the deal was a boost to the government of President Omar Hassan Bashir, which has faced small protests over rising prices. The government scaled back costly fuel subsidies in June to help plug a budget gap left when South Sudan took three-quarters of the country’s oil output at independence, stoking already double-digit inflation.