Sudan, South Sudan revisit cooperation agreement

JUBA, South Sudan

Sudan and South Sudan revisited on Thursday a fraught cooperation agreement which the two countries failed to completely implement.

South Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Awut Deng Acuil told reporters that a meeting with a Sudanese delegation headed by premier Abdalla Hamdok was based on bilateral relations concerning the agreement.

"We have discussed more bilateral issues concerning the peace agreement of South Sudan and Sudan where the issues of borders, economic and political cooperation are still to be discussed, we are going to sit with different institutions in South Sudan to discuss those issues," Acuil said, adding that it was time for Sudan and South Sudan to silence their guns.

"We need to have sustainable peace in the two countries, we all agree to come out with roadmap to work together," she stressed.

Acuil underlined that the agreement represented the opportunity to resolve issues between the two countries to attain peace as well as freedom of movement and trade.

Meanwhile, her Sudanese counterpart Asma Mohamed Abdallah said Khartoum and Juba would resolve all the pending issues and renew their relations.

Abdallah said the new government in Sudan would establish wide areas of cooperation, stressing that it was time to "implement all the agreements which are not implemented".

For his part, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir promised the Sudanese delegation that he would not disappoint them on the issue of cooperation.

Hamdok arrived in South Sudan on Thursday on his first official visit since being appointed as Sudan's prime minister.

"I am very delighted to be here in my second home, Juba. We are looking for a very strategic, very distinguished relationship between our two nations, and the sky is the limit for this relationship," Hamdok said upon his arrival.

He said that their meeting with Kiir would address the issues of trade, borders, oil and movement.

South Sudan split from the north in 2011 after decades of bloody war with Khartoum, famously becoming the world's youngest nation. While tensions remain high between the two countries over ongoing border disputes and the transfer of oil to the north, they have increasingly moved to normalize ties in recent years.