South Sudan to help north

SOUTH SUDAN will help the north get relief on about $38 billion (€27bn) in debt, as long as the north “co-operates” on a border dispute and other issues in the countdown to the country’s split, a southern official said.

Sudan’s oil-producing south is due to separate from the north on July 9 after its people overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January — a vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war.

The sides remain at loggerheads over a list of issues ahead of the split, including ownership of the disputed Abyei border area, the scene of clashes in recent days, and the handling of the country’s crippling debt.