Eritrea denies attacking Sudan

Eritrea has denied backing Sudanese rebel forces which launched an attack in eastern Sudan last week. Foreign Minister Ali Said Abdella told a news conference in Asmara on Sunday that the claims by the Sudanese government were "a total lie with no supporting evidence". According to Sudanese television, Sudanese Foreign Minister Mustafa Uthman Isma'il warned that his country would "confront the Eritrean aggression politically, militarily and through a media campaign". An Eritrean government statement expressed "sadness and surprise" at the minister's remarks. "Sudan knows its opposition forces are operating from within Sudan," the statement said. "They have their bases there." The statement added that Isma'il's comments "violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Eritrea and are a declaration of a situation of war". The Asmara-based opposition National Democratic Alliance (NDA) - of which the rebel Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army (SPLM/A) is the biggest component - claimed responsibility for last Thursday's attacks in which government forces lost control of the religiously significant town of Hamashkoreb in Kassala State. "The targeting and shelling did not stop at Hamashkoreb, but extended to eight other positions on a front whose length is 180 km along our eastern border with Eritrea," a Sudanese government statement said. Sudan's charge d'affaires in Kenya, Muhammad Ahmad Dirdeiry, claimed that "Eritrean artillery has shelled Sudanese positions from across the border". He said Sudanese government troops had pulled out of Hamashkoreb because of the shelling and "have repositioned themselves". "The SPLM/A is not giving very good signals at a time when peace talks are being resumed," he told IRIN on Monday. "The government is determined that it is ready to come back to negotiations in spite of all these instigations made by the SPLM/A." "We feel that if they are going to sign a cessation [of hostilities] there must be no room for such aggression in the future," he added. Eritrea's deputy ambassador to Kenya, Teweldemedhin Tesfamariam, on Monday rejected Dirdeiry's claims. "Eritrea has no business shelling Sudan," he told IRIN. "As far as we are concerned, Sudan has its own problems, seemingly insurmountable. Sudan is inciting battles inside its own territory - in the south, in the east, everywhere." "Sudan has made a habit out of pointing fingers at Eritrea whenever it loses a battle or two," he added." I see nothing new in it, except that this time their foreign minister has taken it too far." Informed Eritrean sources told IRIN the Sudanese government was trying to "make out" that Eritrea was angry over the peace talks between the government and the SPLM/A, due to resume in Kenya next week. But, the sources said, Sudan was "frustrated" because it had lost the strategically important southern town of Torit to the rebels, and now Hamashkoreb. The peace talks, which began in the Kenyan town of Machakos last month, stalled after the rebels took Torit, and the government walked out saying the atmosphere had been "spoiled". Samson Kwaje, the SPLA's Nairobi-based spokesman, confirmed to IRIN that the NDA had bases in eastern Sudan. "We control almost the whole of Kassala [state] now," he asserted. The latest developments could pose a major setback for the huge ongoing Eritrean refugee repatriation operation in which the UN refugee agency UNHCR is assisting tens of thousands of Eritreans to return home from camps in Sudan. UNHCR spokesman Jonathan Clayton told IRIN that the repatriation exercise, due to resume at the weekend after a lull caused by heavy rains, had been put on hold. He said 16 trucks had been positioned in and around the town of Kassala in preparation. The Sudanese government has formally requested UNHCR to stop information campaigns inside the camp, which were part of the repatriation exercise. "There are still 90,000 Eritrean refugees in the camps," Clayton said. "These recent developments will have an impact on the operations to return these refugees, and are definitely not helpful."