Sudan's "baseless charges" denied

Eritrea on Friday denied "baseless charges" by Sudanese officials claiming Sudanese rebel forces were mobilising within Eritrea near the two countries' common border.

An Eritrean official, quoted by the official Shaebia website, said there was a "complete absence of the Sudanese opposition militarily in Eritrea".

"The Sudanese officials know this more than anybody else," he added. "It would be better for the Sudanese government to resolve its political problems instead of resorting to such baseless accusations against others."

Other Eritrean sources told IRIN the Sudanese government "knows the SPLA has bases in eastern Sudan, so why should they be in Eritrea". "Maybe they [Sudanese authorities] are afraid of an imminent SPLA offensive in the east," the sources added.

The accusations were reportedly made by the governor of Sudan's Red Sea State, Hatim al-Sheikh al-Sammani, in the Sudanese newspaper 'Al-Akhbar Al-Youm'. He called for a mobilisation of Sudanese troops within the state to "prepare for any surprise attack...in view of rebel forces' concentrations monitored across the border", Agence France Presse (AFP) quoted the paper as saying. According to the report, the governor claimed rebels of the Sudan People's Liberation Army (SPLA) had been sighted across the border from the Karora area of Red Sea State. Sammani said he did not believe Eritrean troops were among the rebel forces, the report added.

An SPLA official on Friday denied that rebels were preparing to attack Karora. According to the Sudanese 'Al-Khartoum' newspaper, Jor Koj, head of the SPLA office in Cairo, said the allegations were untrue. Aid workers, dealing with the repatriation of Eritrean refugees from Sudan, told IRIN they had not received any reports of Sudanese rebel troop movements.

"Eritrea has played, and is still playing, a positive role in solving the Sudanese problem through dialogue and negotiations," said the Eritrean official, quoted by Shaebia. "Eritrea will continue to play a positive role and facilitate the achievement of a peaceful and inclusive solution in the Sudan, if the concerned parties desire that."

In the 1990s, Sudanese-Eritrean relations were strained over accusations that they were supporting each other's rebels, although there has been an improvement in recent years.