Khartoum, Juba… Insanity “is repeating the same thing …!”

 It is obvious that the recent meetings of the Sudan- South Sudan joint political and security committee in Juba have failed to reach any agreement on the issues of difference between the two countries, so that they announced a forthcoming meeting for the committee in Khartoum.

South Sudan says the talks were deadlocked over Khartoum’s demand to deploy joint patrols on the common border of South Kordofan and Blue Nile where the government is fighting the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement –North (SPLM-N) rebels.

What is very clear is that the key obstacle for the negotiations is the security file and particularly the relationship between the South Sudan and the SPLM-N, where the government of Sudan reiterates its position that the South Sudanese government should disengage with the rebel SPLM-N, arguing that it is incredible that the oil passes through the Sudanese territory to feed the treasury of a nation supporting the insurgency and armed movements.

Meanwhile, the African Union, which earlier urged the Sudanese government and the SPLM-N to begin direct negotiations supervised by the AU high-level panel before Nov. 10 2012, issued a statement on Tuesday citing logistic reasons for the delay.

The statement explained that consultations are ongoing to announce a date for the direct talks aimed at ending the conflict in Blue Nile and South Kurdufan states.

The AU statement said timely implementation of the security agreement between Sudan and South Sudan is vital for building trust and paving the way for going through with the rest of agreements signed in Addis Ababa.

So the negotiations on the SPLM-N situation, I believe, should not be linked or conditioned to the ongoing negotiations between the two countries, particularly the oil issue, since the two countries are now in dire need to the resumption of oil production, as they are both heading very quickly towards a fiscal cliff. 

The two ruling parties in Sudan and South Sudan have a long record of "promises made and promises broken”, yet this time they just cannot get back from the agreements they reached, since they imply sanctions in case of not fully implemented!

The dire need of the two countries of oil revenues should motivate them to resolve their differences peacefully. Taking into account that most of the oil infrastructure in the region are in Sudan, while 70% plus of the oil located in the south Sudan, therefore any unilateral action will not serve the interest of either one because the oil is the lifeline of both economies.

I have recently read an article for a South Sudanese Professor of Sociology, Anne Bartlett, who wroteabout the same issue, and I liked very much her quotation to Einstein in which he quipped that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”!

I hope that the governments of the two states of Sudan would understand that such differences would negatively affect the two sides which will be an additional burden on their economies that are already being bogged down by the continuing faults.