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The Emir, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, brokered a peace deal between Sudan and Eritrea in 1999, AFP reported, and this week he hoped to reactivate the accord signed in Doha in May 1999. His visit is aimed at normalising relations between Khartoum and Asmara, after Sudanese officials accused neighbouring Eritrea of backing Sudanese rebels in eastern Sudan.
The Doha peace accord requires both countries to stop hosting and supporting the other’s opposition groups, and to form joint teams to monitor their common border. Since the agreement, Eritrea established agreed-upon border crossing points, but failed to expel armed Sudanese opposition groups. Journalists reported the presence of Sudanese rebels in western Eritrea in May, when the two year Eritrean-Ethiopian border war flared up again. The Eritrean government has denied any involvement in planning a rebel invasion of Sudan, or of a build-up of the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) on the Eritrean border. Eritrea, for its part, protested that Sudan had facilitated Ethiopian troops in their invasion of western Eritrea in May and June.
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