Sudan’s Bashir says tensions with South could ‘possibly’ lead to war

Sudan is closer to war than peace with the breakaway state of South Sudan, President Omar al-Bashir said on national television on Friday.

“The climate now is closer to a climate of war than one of peace,” Bashir said.

He spoke after South Sudanese President Salva Kiir warned on Thursday that renewed conflict could erupt if bitter oil negotiations with Khartoum do not include a deal on other key issues, including the contested Abyei region, according to AFP.

Asked in an interview with state television whether war could break out with Juba, Bashir said: “There is a possibility.”

He said Sudan wanted peace but added: “We will go to war if we are forced to go to war.”

Sudan is locked in a row with South Sudan over sharing oil revenues after the South took away three-quarters of the oil production when it became independent in July under a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war.

The landlocked new African nation needs to export its crude through a Sudanese port and pipelines but both sides have failed to reach a deal, prompting Khartoum to seize some southern oil as compensation for what it calls unpaid fees.

Bashir accused Juba of having shut down oil production to provoke a collapse of the Sudanese government, according to Reuters.

He also said his southern counterpart Salva Kirr had refused to reach a deal about oil payments at a meeting last week on the sidelines of the African Union in Addis Ababa.

“They (the South) didn’t sign and they will not sign,” Bashir said, adding that Khartoum was entitled to 74,000 barrels of day of southern oil. “This is our right,” he said.

The crisis between the two nations has become a major threat to regional peace and security, United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon had said.

Khartoum admits to confiscating 1.7 million barrels of South Sudanese crude since vowing in November to take 23 percent of southern oil exports as payment in kind during the fee dispute.

The South calls this “theft.”

“We will continue taking our rights in kind until we reach agreement,” Bashir said.

When South Sudan separated, it took with it three-quarters of the country's total oil production of 470,000 barrels per day.

But landlocked and grossly underdeveloped South Sudan can only ship its oil through the north, leaving the two countries disputing how much Juba should pay for pumping its crude through the pipeline and Red Sea marine terminal.

The South depends on oil for more than 90 percent of its revenues, while Khartoum’s finance minister said late last year that the loss of oil from the South left a budget shortfall of 30 percent.

Since then, Sudan has witnessed spiraling inflation -- which the government sees reaching 17 percent this year -- and the sharp devaluation of the Sudanese pound.

At the same time, crippling debts of almost $40 billion and U.S. economic sanctions, which have banned virtually all trade with Sudan since 1997, choke its access to external financing.

In South Kordofan and Blue Nile States, along the contested border with South Sudan, the regime has for several months been fighting ethnic minority insurgents who fought alongside the former rebels now ruling in Juba.