On Saturday, head of the Sudanese National Border Commission, Dr. Moaz Ahmed Mohamed Tengu, threatened that they would resort to international arbitration in the event that diplomatic efforts to resolve the border dispute with Ethiopia failed.
In press statements, Tengo pointed out that Ethiopia has been using delaying tactics since the 1992 agreement was signed, stressing that Sudan does not seek a military solution in the Fashaqa border area with Ethiopia.
He confirmed that the area belongs to the Sudanese territory for 500 years.
The Sudanese official stated that the dispute with Ethiopia was not about the demarcation of borders, which were successfully set in accordance with an agreement concluded between Britain and the Emperor of Abyssinia in 1903, noting that the current negotiations aim at re-demarcating the borders and intensifying the number of border markers so that the citizens of the two countries can see them.
Tengo stressed the importance of negotiations in ending the current border dispute through political dialogue, adding that Sudan "will not accept any official Ethiopian influence on its lands."
Tensions in the border region have flared since the outbreak of conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in early November and the arrival of more than 50,000 mainly Tigrayan refugees in eastern Sudan.
Disputes have been concentrated on agricultural land in al-Fashqa, which falls within Sudan’s international boundaries but has long been settled by Ethiopian farmers.
There have been armed clashes between Sudanese and Ethiopian forces in recent weeks, with both sides accusing the other of instigating the violence. The two countries held talks this week in Khartoum over the issue.
“We believe in dialogue to solve any problem,” Sudan’s information minister, Faisal Salih, said on Friday. “But our army will do its duty to take back all our land. Currently our army has taken back between 60% and 70% of Sudanese land.”
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