President Salva Kiir shares light moments with his Security Adviser Tut Gatluak in 2019 | Credit | Maal Maker

The Sudanese minister of foreign affairs has welcomed the formation of a committee to negotiate the final status of the Abyei Administrative Area.

On Monday, President Salva Kiir formed a committee headed up by his advisor for security affairs – Tut Gatluak – to initiate talks with the Sudanese government.

The formation of the committee comes a week after armed men allegedly aided by a Sudanese army outfit killed 12 civilians and wounded several others in Abyei.

It is tasked with negotiating with the government of Sudan in order to reach an amicable solution on the status of Abyei.

They are also expected to feed President Salva Kiir with monthly updates on the progress of the negotiation.

“Borders are the basis for real economic, social and political integration. There must be no conflict over such areas,” Mariam al-Sadiq al-Madhdi said in Juba.

“We…[have] to address the issue…in order to achieve the goal of one people in two countries, and how we can work together.”

The committee has been advised to negotiate with Khartoum in the spirit of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement or CPA signed between the two countries in 2005.

The oil-rich border region of Abyei has been contested since South Sudan gained independence in 2011.

The Abyei Area was accorded a “special administrative status” by the 2004 Protocol on the Resolution of the Abyei Conflict, known as, the Abyei Protocol.

Under the terms of the Protocol, the Abyei Area was declared part of the states of South Kordofan and Northern Bahr el Ghazal and issues related to it to be determined by the Presidency made up of President Salva Kiir and former Sudanese President Omar al Bashir.

After years of contentions between leaders in South Sudan and Sudan on who is eligible to vote in the referendum, the nine Ngok Dinka chiefdoms took the matter into their own hands by organizing their own popular vote.

They cited the Abyei Protocol in the CPA, and the ruling by the International Permanent Court of Arbitration, which proclaimed that only the Ngok Dinka tribe and permanent residents may vote.

The Sudanese government wanted the nomadic Arab Misseriya tribe, whose cattle accesses pasture lands in Abyei annually, to be accorded full voting rights.

Several inter-communal clashes between the armed Misseriya pastoralist tribe of Sudan and the Dinka Ngok of South Sudan have led to many civilian deaths in the last decade.