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Gold/Mining/Energy : ARAKIS: HIGH RISK OIL PLAY (AKSEF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomas who wrote (9100)	9/15/1998 5:14:00 PM
From: Tomas	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 9164

Clashes bring turmoil to Sudan oil zone By Alfred Taban KHARTOUM, Sept 15 (Reuters) - The leader of one of Sudan's pro-government militias has accused another of working with rebels to stir up clashes in a sensitive oil-producing region. The fighting between forces of long-standing rivals Paulino Matip and Riek Machar in south Sudan's Unity state has worried the government, which has stopped supplying arms to the two leaders since their traditional conflict intensified in January. Matip said late on Monday that Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) rebels were arming Machar, a former SPLA rebel who signed a peace accord with the Khartoum government in 1997. ''In the fighting that is still going on, Machar's forces have been cooperating with the SPLA, which has sent ammunition and soldiers to fight on Machar's side,'' he told Reuters in an interview at his home in a Khartoum suburb. Machar and Matip both belong to the Nuer tribe, the second largest tribe in southern Sudan after the Dinkas. It was believed to be the first time Machar had been accused of realigning himself with his former comrades in the SPLA. No comment from Machar or the SPLA was immediately available. Forces loyal to Matip and Machar have battled several times in their home state of Unity in southern Sudan. Government troops intervened in August when the militias clashed for the first time near the capital Khartoum. Sudan's Islamist government led by President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has been pinning hopes for an economic revival partly on a pipeline project to bring oil from fields in the Unity region to a terminal to be built at Port Sudan on the Red Sea. Matip is the commander of the South Sudan United Army (SSUA), which broke in March from Machar's South Sudan Defence Force (SSDF). Machar also heads a coordinating council formed by the government to rule the south. Bashir's government has arranged four ceasefires between the rival factions in the last nine months. None of them has held. Matip said the latest fighting broke out on September 5 and there had been heavy casualties. He said it started when his forces were withdrawing from Ler, a town in Unity state which his troops had taken from Machar in June. He said SSDF forces had attacked and driven his forces out of Wankei, about 120 km (75 miles) northwest of Ler. ''They burnt down Wankei, killed innocent people and abducted children,'' Matip said, adding that his troops had recaptured Wankei and were pursuing Machar's forces towards Ler. Matip has accused Machar of failing to govern the south. He said he opposed Machar's choice of Taban Deng Gai as governor of Unity state, alleging that Gai had brought 150 SSDF troops into the state capital Bentiu to coerce state parliament members into voting for him. Militia clashes complicate the 15-year-old civil war, which in broad terms pits the government against SPLA demands for greater autonomy for the black African and mainly Christian or animist south. Aid workers say the fighting exacerbates the food crisis in the south and hinders delivery of relief goods. Thousands of people in Unity state have been killed or displaced as their villages are burnt in the conflict. One cause of the famine now afflicting parts of southern Bahr al-Ghazal state is fighting that erupted in the state capital Wau in January when Kerubino Kwanyin Bol, another former SPLA leader who had gone over to the government, changed sides again.