{{Sudan and South Sudan will normalise ties and start cross-border co-operation, Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir has said.}}<\/p>\n
Bashir made the comments on Friday during his first visit to South Sudan since July 2011 when the south seceded and became an independent state.<\/p>\n
“This visit shows the start of cooperation based on a normalisation of relations between the two countries,” Bashir said in a speech in the capital Juba.<\/p>\n
South Sudan’s Salva Kiir said he had agreed with Bashir to continue a dialogue to solve all outstanding conflicts between the African neighbours.<\/p>\n
Bashir was received at Juba airport by Kiir, his former civil war foe and an ex-rebel commander.<\/p>\n
A military band played the national anthems of the two countries as the two heads of state greeted South Sudanese ministers assembled to welcome Bashir.<\/p>\n
Bashir’s visit “will be good for the future of the two countries,” Barnaba Marial Benjamin, South Sudan’s information minister, said before Bashir’s plane touched down.<\/p>\n
“There should be peace between the two countries,” he said.<\/p>\n
The two nations agreed in March to resume cross-border oil flows and take steps to defuse tension that has plagued them since South Sudan seceded from Sudan in July 2011 following a treaty which ended decades of civil war.<\/p>\n
They still have not agreed who owns Abyei province and other regions along their disputed 2,000km border.<\/p>\n
Bashir had planned to visit South Sudan’s capital, Juba, a year ago but cancelled the trip when fighting erupted along their border and almost flared into full-scale war.<\/p>\n
Bashir is expected to arrive with a large delegation and will discuss oil, border trade and security with Kiir, said Benjamin, the information minister.<\/p>\n
“They need to talk about the Abyei administration and things related to the Abyei area,” he said.<\/p>\n
Al Jazeera’s Harriet Martin, reporting from Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, said the visit was symbolic and that “there will be a day’s serious work of discussions”.<\/p>\n
{{Oil production}}<\/p>\n
South Sudan’s secession left unresolved a long list of disputes over territory and how much the landlocked south should pay to export its oil through Sudan.<\/p>\n
The new African country shut down its entire oil output of 350,000 barrels a day in January last year at the height of the dispute over pipeline fees – a closure that had a devastating effect on both struggling economies.<\/p>\n
The two sides subsequently agreed to restart oil shipments, grant each others’ citizens residency, increase border trade and encourage close cooperation between their central banks.<\/p>\n
Last week, South Sudan re-launched oil production with the first oil cargo expected to reach Sudan’s Red Sea export
\nterminal at Port Sudan by the end of May.<\/p>\n
Both nations also withdrew their troops from border areas as agreed in a deal brokered by the African Union in September.<\/p>\n
Bashir last visited Juba on July 9, 2011 to attend the ceremony marking South Sudan’s formal separation.<\/p>\n
About two million people died in the war that was fuelled by divisions over religion, oil, ethnicity and ideology and ended in 2005 with a deal that paved the way for Juba’s secession.<\/p>\n
{Aljazeera}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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