Sudan rivals to meet on flashpoint Abyei region

Armed uniformed men walking past burning businesses and homesteads locally known as 'tukuls' in Abyei South Sudan's vice president flew to Khartoum on Saturday on a mission to "ease tensions" over Abyei, one week after northern troops overran the contested border region, a southern official said. The high-level delegation led by the vice president, Riek Machar, arrived in Khartoum, said authorities in Juba, the capital of south Sudan.
"It is aimed as an effort to normalise and ease tensions, and to improve the situation in Abyei," a southern official said about the aim of the delegation.
The delegation met officials of the south's Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) in the north and was also to hold talks with northern vice president Ali Osman Taha.
The surprise visit came as the northern National Congress Party and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement were to meet in Addis Ababa on Saturday for talks also to be attended by the African Union panel on Sudan and South Africa's former president Thabo Mbeki.
Khartoum's chief Abyei negotiator Al-Dirdiri Mohammed Ahmed said on Friday that the northern government was "open" to negotiations with the south.

South Sudan leader Salva Kiir has called for a complete withdrawal of Sudanese government forces from Abyei, insisting the south did not want a return to war.
The northern troops have deployed as far south as the River Kiir, known in northern Sudan as the Bahr al-Arab, which has become the frontline between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and southern troops.
A southern Sudanese minister said more than 150,000 people have fled violence ravaging the border region and surrounding areas since May 21 when northern troops and tanks took control.
But the United Nations says it can only confirm that up to 40,000 people are displaced.
At least 15,000 people are living in the open in Turalei, some 130 kilometres (80 miles) from Abyei town, according to the UN.
"The situation remains difficult," said Dominic Deng Kuoc, the commissioner for Twic county, which includes Turalei and borders Abyei. "There have just been heavy rains and the people are outside, with only trees for shelter."
Food rations were being distributed but the process was slow. "There are people still coming, many carrying little, so they all need much support," he said.
The Sudanese army urged people who had fled Abyei to return.
"The fighting in Abyei is finished, the SAF (Sudan Armed Forces) are calling for Misseriya and Dinka to come back to Abyei for their normal life," a statement said.

Rivalry between the Misseriya northern Arab nomads and the pro-southern Dinka Ngok is the main source of the conflict in Abyei.
"SAF is committed to protect relief work in the area of Abyei," the army statement added.
Anger remains high in the south.
A crowd of about 100 paraded through the southern capital Juba on Saturday to demand support for those displaced and for the north to withdraw troops.
"Justice for the people of Abyei," read one banner. "Abyei is ours," read another.
Abyei's future is the most sensitive of a raft of issues on which the two sides had been struggling to reach agreement before the south's full independence in July.
Abyei has become a "ghost town," where only Sudanese soldiers and allied Misseriya tribesmen are present, said a spokesman for the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS).
A staunch ally of the government in Khartoum, the Misseriya tribe migrates every year in the dry season towards Bahr al-Arab river, which marks the southern border of Abyei, seeking pastures and fresh waters for their cattle.
The region was due to vote on its future in January alongside a referendum on independence for the south, but the decision was indefinitely postponed due to a dispute over the Misseriya's voting rights.
The north's seizure of Abyei, in the run-up to the planned international recognition of southern independence in July, has been condemned by major powers.
Abyei is just one of several problems the south faces ahead of independence, with multiple separate rebellions and violent cattle raids.
More than 1,400 people have died in violence this year in the south, according to the UN, while there is also growing concern at the suppression of human rights and a media crackdown.