TPLF/Meles has chosen to side with china already. This should be an interesting development.

Published: 19 April, 2012

Meanwhile, their “border war” threatens to provoke a conflict among the permanent members of UN Security Council. South Sudan is an ally of the US, while Khartoum has close ties with Russia and China.

“If the conflict escalates, we are likely to see a stalemate at the UNSC with China and Russia opposing any proposals that may be politically costly to Sudan,” political author and columnist Reason Wafawarova told RT. “The US, with its allies France and the UK, is likely to push for proposals politically favorable to South Sudan, while opposing any proposals they may see as benefiting Sudan.”

Wafawarova says Sudan is seen as militarily superior to South Sudan. The US is unlikely to allow Juba’s capitulation, increasing its military support.

Some reports allege that the West is already providing arms to South Sudan through its Middle Eastern partners. For instance, Sudan’s Al-Intibaha newspaper writes that Israel might be supplying weapons to Juba.

South talking tough too

Another indicator that Juba has some serious allies in the West is the tough stance of South Sudan’s president, Salva Kiir.

When the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon called him and asked to stop the attack on Heglig, he received a surprisingly defiant answer: “I am not a slave to fulfill your orders!”

Experts say the behavior of President Kiir may be explained by the fact that he was confident of the unshakable support of the United States. Previously the US helped the southerners in their fight against the “dictatorial regime in Khartoum.”

The reason, Wafawarova says, is that it is no secret the United States militarily supported South Sudan in its campaign for secession from the North.

The US reportedly provided $100 million-a-year in military assistance to the SPLA. The information about the nature of this assistance has been scarce, but in December 2009 WikiLeaks released a diplomatic cable that refers to a US “training program for the SPLA, including combat arms soldier training.”

On the other side are Russia and China, who have traditionally supported close ties with Khartoum, selling weapons to Sudan right up to the 2005 UN arms embargo on the Sudanese government because of the war in Darfur.

However, in 2008 a BBC news report claimed to have found evidence of China-Sudan trade in violation of the embargo.

Currently, China is Sudan’s largest trading partner, importing oil and exporting low-cost goods.

Wafawarova believes that the permanent USNC council members’ standoff in the region may lead to an arms race between the two Sudans. US will be “expanding the military strength of South Sudan, while China and Russia will keep arming Khartoum,” he said.

There are also persistent rumors that the US plans to set up a military base in South Sudan – the largest in Africa.

“The US has failed to set up its AFRICOM base in Ghana, Mozambique, Uganda, Kenya and other proposed countries in the past,” says Wafawarova. “It would not be surprising if the US is trying to capitalize on the vulnerability of South Sudan in its efforts to establish the AFRICOM base somewhere in sub-Saharan Africa.”

However, Wafawarova stressed that any efforts to set up AFRICOM in South Sudan are likely to face stiff opposition from Russia and China, as well as from the African Union and most African countries at individual levels.

http://rt.com/news/sudan-south-sudan-war-338/

Here is what the Economist observed in 2010 about Meles/TPLF. It's no secret that Meles/TPLF has chosen to move over to China. Of course, there are also the Wikileaks files that clearly show this.

Oct 21st 2010 | ADDIS ABABA |

Mr Meles’s contempt for what he calls the “neoliberalism” of the West is as plain as his admiration for “generous” and “dependable” China. Chinese Communist Party officials were feted at a recent EPRDF conference. Hailemariam Desalegn, the new foreign minister and deputy prime minister, has been conspicuous in urging Ethiopia to follow China’s model.

Mr Meles argues that the free market has cost Africa decades of development. By siding with China, this will never happen again. The Europeans and Americans find this galling, since they continue to pay for many of Ethiopia’s hospitals and schools, as well as handing out free food. But trade between Ethiopia and China is increasingly what matters. It was worth $800m in the first six months of this year, up by 27% on last year.

China has invested $2.5 billion in Ethiopia, mostly in infrastructure. Mr Meles wants China to take a lead in building a new railway network. He has also promised to use Chinese loans to build a controversial dam on the Omo River in the south. And China has decided to lend Ethiopia $234m so that nine vessels are built in Chinese shipyards for the Ethiopian Shipping Line, which operates out of Djibouti.

http://www.economist.com/node/17314616

Uganda warns Sudan over attacking Juba

Posted Friday, April 20 2012 at 00:00
In Summary

We shall intervene. Army chief Gen. Aronda says reports that LRA rebels have made contact with Khartoum, coupled with lessons from the past, will push Kampala to pull the trigger.


The Chief of Defence Forces, Gen. Aronda Nyakairima, has said Uganda will be forced to intervene if the fighting between South Sudan and Sudan escalates into a full-scale war.

Gen. Aronda said the UPDF also has intelligence information that Khartoum was “again making contacts” with the Lord’s Resistance Army rebels, whom he said have moved towards Bahr-el- Gazel.

“We will not sit by and do nothing. We will be involved having suffered a proxy war by Khartoum. Our people in northern Uganda suffered and intelligence information also indicates that the LRA, who have an estimated 200 guns, are again in contact with Khartoum,” he said.

Gen. Aronda was on Wednesday night presenting a paper on the role of African militaries in promoting peace and security in East Africa and the Horn of Africa to a meeting of military generals and other security experts from Kenya, Uganda and Ethiopia in Kampala.

His comments appeared to confirm previously unverified reports that the militaries of some Great Lakes region countries have been mobilised in preparation for what could turn out to be Africa’s next war, this time pitting parts of Black Africa against a Khartoum-led Arab coalition.

There are security reports saying the LRA, who were previously hiding in the forests of Obo, Central African Republic, have moved to Northern CAR near the Sudan border, sparking fears that the Ugandan rebels could be about to be re-injected into a conflict which for decades had Uganda and the Islamic regime locked in mortal proxy combat.

Gen. Aronda told his colleagues from Kenya and Ethiopia to come up with a position on the fighting which has broken out between the two countries.

South Sudan is Uganda’s biggest export trading partner and if the fighting escalates to all-out warfare, the country is likely to lose billions of dollars and contend with another humanitarian crisis as refugees stream across the northern frontier.

The bilateral trade between Uganda and South Sudan is highly asymmetric with the volume of exports from Uganda being disproportionately larger than the volume of exports from Sudan to Uganda and largely informal.

There is also flourishing informal trading between communities across the borders.

Gen. Aronda called for an urgent meeting of the Inter-governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which brings together eight eastern African countries to discuss the fighting that is taking place along the shared border around the oil town of Heglig, which South Sudanese troops captured last week.

The two-day security meeting organised by Advocates Coalition for Development and Environment (ACODE) and International Development Association (IDA) discussed fragility of the security situation in the Horn of Africa.

When asked whether Uganda would be involved militarily, the UPDF spokesperson, Col. Felix Kulayigye, said: “I don’t want to speculate but as a member of IGAD, we shall not sit and watch the Comprehensive Peace Agreement being reversed.”

In 2005, Khartoum signed onto the precursor to Southern Sudan’s independence, the CPA, with the then rebel Sudanese People’s Liberation Army, bringing to an end a conflict which had sucked in Uganda whose northern territories became a proxy fighting field between UPDF and the LRA.

Gen. Aronda’s comments coincide with threats by the Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir to topple the South Sudan government in Juba and “liberate” the south Sudanese.

But hours after Bashir’s threats, Juba announced they had captured another town near the border with the northern neighbour.

The army spokesman, Col. Philip Aguer, said their troops fought off a huge SAF invasion targeting Western Bahr-el-Ghazel State, eventually capturing a spot that SAF has long held in Rajab County in the state.
However, Juba said it was ready for talks with Sudan.

Information minister, Dr Barnaba Marial Benjamin said in statement that they want SAF to withdraw from Abyei, cessation of hostilities, deployment of UN troops as some of the conditions that would enable the southern troops to withdraw from Heglig.

Enemy state
The northern state’s parliament was quick to brand its southern neighbour an “enemy” on Tuesday and called for the swift recapture of the region.

The former deputy Kenyan chief of defence forces, Lt. Gen. John Koech, yesterday told Daily Monitor that the UN has to create a buffer zone to restrain the two countries from engaging in a bloody war.

President Museveni recently told European Union delegates during a meeting at State House in Entebbe that Arab chauvinism is the cause of animosity between the two countries and the marginalisation of people in Nuba, Darfur, Blue Nile and Kordofan states.

Idiots are running this war. Like many other wars they run, this too will fall on their face and later on the people of the region pay dearly. Afrter invading an area that is outside of theier national border SPLA is looking for more trouble. Their people will be harmed more than the people of the North, for they are established. I hate to be a citizen of South Sudan, for I do not have a government that care about me, but satisfying their ego.

The slave Zenawi serving two masters ? What does the Bible say about a slave serving two masters? Former Somali President Siad Barre foolishly attempted to serve the two opposing blocks of the cold war simultaneously and found himself dispose of like a used condom and kicked to the curb. And we all know the fate of Somalia thereafter.

Times have changed, so did strategies. The requirement for working together is only based on 'you do this for us and we do this for you.' The tactic is no different than the tactics lone terrorists use, when it suites them they live amongst normal people and when it does not suit them they take out their real identity and harm innocent civilians. TPLF is there is to serve in a similar capaity, he does what he does when it suites him.