Agreement reached on border security

Sudan and Eritrea have agreed to cooperate to curb smuggling and illegal infiltration, and to ensure the safe passage of people and goods across the common border, AFP reported on Tuesday, quoting a report in the Egyptian independent ‘Al-Ayyam’ daily. Officials from the northeastern state of Kassala in Sudan and Eritrea’s Gash Region, brokered the deal after two days of meetings in Kassala, a border town 400 km east of the capital, Khartoum. The two sides also agreed to coordinate security and exchange information, and to regulate border trade by recording imports and exports, the paper said. They further agreed to establish joint programmes for pest control, livestock vaccination and flood control measures along the Gash river. However, the Eritreans had reservations regarding the inclusion of a provision on halting “hostile” activities between the two neighboring regions in the communiqué, which was signed by Kassala State Governor General Adam Hamid Musa and, Gash representative Michael Gebre, the paper is quoted by AFP as saying. In November 2000, the forces of the Sudanese opposition umbrella group, the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), attacked and held Kassala for 24 hours after infiltrating across the border from Eritrea. The Sudanese government claims that over 130 civilians, government troops and NDA forces were killed during the heavy fighting to recapture the town. Kassala commands the main paved road between Khartoum and the country’s only Red Sea deep-water harbour, Port Sudan. The Khartoum government said the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) was chiefly responsible for the attack, which came shortly after Sudan and Eritrea had re-established diplomatic relations, and only a month after they committed themselves to a good-neighbourliness policy, following a summit in Khartoum between Eritrean President Isayas Afewerki and Sudanese President Umar al-Bashir. Although many Sudanese opposition groups, including the SPLA, have taken up residence in Eritrea, the government denies that it supplies such groups with arms and ammunition.