Sudan oil row ‘could lead to war’

Sudan’s president, Omar Hassan al-Bashir, warned last night that tensions with South Sudan over oil transit payments could lead to war.

Asked in an interview with state television whether war could break out, Mr 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.”

His country 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 last 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.

Mr Bashir accused the government in Juba of having shut down oil production to provoke a collapse of the Sudanese government.

He also said his southern counterpart, Salva Kirr, had refused to reach a deal about oil payments at a meeting last week.

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