UN Extends Southern Sudan Peacekeeping Mission

UNITED NATIONS (AP) -- The Security Council voted unanimously Wednesday night to extend the U.N. peacekeeping mission in southern Sudan and called for demarcation of the contested oil-rich border region between the north and south.

Some 10,000 U.N. peacekeepers are enforcing a 2005 peace deal that ended more than two decades of civil war between the ethnic African south and Sudan's Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum -- but peace remains fragile.

The disputed region in southern Kordofan province, where four days of fighting between south Sudanese troops and Arab tribesman ended Tuesday, is claimed by north and south, like the nearby oil rich region of Abyei. Both have become potential flashpoints that could wreck the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement.

In a report to the Security Council earlier this month, Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said recent clashes and tensions in
the Abyei area "represent a potential threat to the agreement" and to the national unity government in Khartoum that now includes members of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement which led the war in the south.

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