20120214
AFP
Sudan's military has stopped the return of South Sudanese by barge on the White Nile river because of suspicions they are also being used by the South to reinforce troops near the tense border, sources said on Monday.

"No further barges carrying passengers can go from Kosti," one source told AFP, asking not to be identified.

The International Organisation for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental body, last month said it had received international funding to transport 7,000 people from Kosti, about 200 kilometres (124 miles) south of Khartoum, on the two-week barge journey to the South Sudanese capital of Juba.

They are among up to 700,000 ethnic southerners estimated to still be in Sudan ahead of an April deadline for them to either go South or normalise their status with the Khartoum authorities.

By late last year the IOM had already transported by barge more than 17,000 people considered particularly in need and who had been stranded at Kosti for months in rough conditions awaiting their journey south.

Sources said the military did not give a reason last week for stopping the next round of barge transport, but it apparently suspects the vessels are transporting soldiers and their equipment towards the frontier after dropping off the southerners.

In a statement to AFP, the IOM said only that it is "looking into this and to alternatives" for transporting the returnees.

Since last year Sudanese troops have been fighting in Blue Nile and South Kordofan states, along the poorly defined border, against ethnic minority insurgents who fought beside the former rebels now ruling South Sudan.

The South gained independence from Khartoum last July after decades of civil war.

Each side has accused the other of supporting rebels inside their respective borders, and other unresolved issues have sparked fears of renewed fighting between north and south.

Since late last year the IOM has also returned some southerners by train. The agency said in January that it had funding for another six trains to transport about 8,600 people.

The UN's High Commissioner for Refugees, Antonio Guterres, has said he believed most of the 700,000 in Sudan want to go South.

On Sunday, Khartoum and Juba agreed to cooperate in the transfer of ethnic southerners to the new nation, the official SUNA news agency said.

Khartoum's Social Welfare Minister, Amira al-Fadel Mohamed, signed a memorandum of understanding on the issue with South Sudan's Minister of Humanitarian Affairs Joseph Lual Achwel, SUNA said.

The agreement covers road, air and river transport, it added.

Despite the deal, the IOM and the UN have said it is logistically impossible for all southerners in Sudan to either move south or obtain official status in Sudan before the April 8 deadline.