Sudan-Egypt land dispute resurfaces

A picture of the newly-opened Eshkeet-Qastal land crossing between Sudan and Egypt, in this August 27, 2014 file photo. (AFP)

KHARTOUM: Sudan insisted on Monday it had “sovereign rights” over two border territories whose ownership has been the subject of a long-standing dispute between Cairo and Khartoum.
Sudan has regularly protested at Egypt’s administration of Halayeb and Shalatin near the Red Sea, saying they are part of its sovereign territory since shortly after independence in 1956.
Since April, Khartoum has stepped up its claim to the territories lately.
“We will not let go of our sovereign rights on the Halayeb triangle,” Foreign Minister Ibrahim Ghandour told Parliament on Monday.
“We have adopted legal and political measures to assert our rights in the Halayeb triangle.”
Ghandour said Khartoum was also trying to get a copy of the agreement between Cairo and Riyadh on the transfer of the two islands in the Straits of Tiran.
“We need to gauge the impact of this agreement on our maritime borders,” he told lawmakers.
Meanwhile, Sudan’s highest court has allowed a leading newspaper to resume publishing, nearly five months after the authorities banned it from printing, the newspaper’s editor said on Monday.
Sudan’s National Intelligence and Security Service had suspended the independent Al-Tayar newspaper in December after it published a series of editorials criticizing the government.