Sudan government denies aid group claims

Sudan government leaders on both sides rebuffed the claims made by aid groups during the week. A coalition of aid groups says that Sudan is very close to resuming it's civil war. A new incident of violence was discovered during the week where over 140 people died.

From Reuters, writer Andrew Heavens received from quotes of denial from government officials

Sudan ended more than two decades of north-south civil war with the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement, but relations between the two sides have remained tense.

Aid groups and campaigners issued a series of reports in recent days warning there was a risk of fresh conflict as Sudan counted down the days to national elections in April and a referendum on whether the south should split off as an independent country, due in January 2011.

"The situation in southern Sudan is very far from what has been depicted...It is not all doom and gloom," Anne Itto, a senior member of the south's dominant Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) told reporters.

Itto, speaking in the southern capital Juba, said the campaigners had failed to take into account significant improvements and development in the five years since the accord.

Sudan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement a report "from some foreign organisations...that the north and the south are doomed to go back to war, was not correct and was not backed by facts on the ground".

There was a need to tighten security in the south, ministry spokesman Moawia Osman Khalid told the state Suna news agency.

But "war is no longer an option for the remedy of the situation between the north and the south, given the fact that the country has tasted the woes of the war and its repercussions," he added.