ABYEI BOUNDARY, SUDAN: PCA decision favours NCP says delegation chief

From Sudan Radio Service, Wednesday, 22 July 2009:
Decision Favours NCP Says Delegation Chief

(The Hague) – The NCP head of delegation to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, Muhammad al-Diri-Diri, says that the ruling in The Hague has favoured the position of the NCP.

Speaking to journalists in The Hague after the ruling, al-Diri-Diri said that NCP succeeded because the court ruling stated the Heglig oil field is not in the Abyei area.

Muhammad al-Diri-Diri]: “We observed the following: First, all the oil-fields of Heglig were removed from Abyei. We consider this to be a great achievement. These fields were included unfairly to the Abyei area, and now it is returning to the north without a conflict. Secondly, removing the area extending along the Darfur and Kordofan boundaries from the Abyei areas, we consider this an important achievement, because this place was outside the conflict areas for a long period. Thirdly, the return of an area that ranges from between ten to eleven thousand square kilometers out of a total of sixteen thousand square kilometers which was disputed between us and SPLM is a great achievement.”

That was Muhammad al-Diri-Diri, speaking in The Hague.

22 July 2009 – (Nairobi) – Speaking to Sudan Radio Service in Nairobi, Edward Lino, a former chief administrator of Abyei and a senior SPLM member, dismissed the al-Diri-Diri's remarks saying that the main problem was where the people in the area live - not the location of the oil-producing areas.

[Edward Lino]: “They (the NCP) are talking about Meram in the west being redefined in order to know exactly where to put the boundary. In the east, they don't want Heglig and some two other oil-producing areas to be part of the Abyei area. But in fact, Heglig is part of Upper Nile [Unity state], it is not part of the Abyei area, so whatever people like al-Diri-Diri are saying about a success - that it’s a very big success for the National Congress Party because of the oil-producing area, our problem is the human being. Where they live and where they belong. So now the fact that the boundaries have been established should make the Missiriya realize now that they have no claim on the whole Ngok area, which was the problem. They were even talking about boundaries going south of the River Kiir but now the boundary is far, far north of the River Kiir. So we have really succeeded because peace in that area is peace for everybody. It is peace for for the Missiriya, the Dinka, in Aweil, in Twic and for the Nuer and for the other people there. So what we need is peace so that our people can go back and settle and do the things people are doing everywhere else in the world.”

That was Edward Lino, speaking to Sudan Radio Service, in Nairobi.

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