Sudan accuses Ethiopia of escalation amid border row

KHARTOUM

Sudan on Saturday accused Ethiopia of escalation amid rising tensions between the two neighbors over a disputed border region.

In a statement, Sudan’s Foreign Ministry rejected Ethiopian accusations that Khartoum is staging a proxy war against Addis Ababa.

With an African Union envoy in Sudan in order to stem the border row, “the Ethiopian Foreign Ministry is escalating against Sudan and humiliating Khartoum,” the statement said, calling this “unforgiveable.”

Khartoum warned that Ethiopia is threatening regional peace and security and threatened to expel Ethiopian peacekeepers deployed in Sudan.

“It’s unreasonable that while Sudan is trusting Ethiopian forces in Sudan as peacekeepers, Ethiopian forces are attacking our territories,” the ministry said.

Since 2011 there have been 5,000 Ethiopian peacekeepers deployed in the disputed Abiy area between Sudan and South Sudan.

Khartoum and Addis Ababa are locked in a dispute over the Al-Fashqa border region and construction of the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on the Blue Nile River, with Khartoum fearing that filling the dam without an agreement will harm its own dams.

Sudan stressed that it will not abandon its territory, saying that previous agreements between the two countries, including colonial-era agreements, clearly show that Al-Fashqa is located inside the Sudanese borders.