Sudan and South Sudan to resume stalled talks on Thursday

In a new attempt to resolve a conflict over oil and land, Sudan and South Sudan will resume stalled talks on Thursday to set up a demilitarised border zone, Reuters cited Sudan's state news agency SUNA as saying on Wednesday. The African neighbours came close to war in April in the worst border clashes since South Sudan seceded from Sudan in 2011 under a 2005 deal which ended decades of civil war. After mediation from the African Union, both countries agreed in September to set up a buffer zone along their disputed border and resume oil exports from landlocked South Sudan through Sudan. Oil is vital to both economies. But neither side has withdrawn its army from the almost 2,000-km (1,200-mile) border due to mistrust left from one of Africa's longest civil wars. Two meetings of Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir and South Sudan's Salva Kiir in Addia Ababa in January failed to break the deadlock. In the first talks for more than six weeks, the joint political security committee, comprising defence officials from both countries tasked with setting up the buffer zone, will meet again in Ethiopia, SUNA said. The meeting would prepare a session of the two defence ministers, SUNA said, without giving details. South Sudan's Information Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin could not be reached on his mobile phone.