Court to rule on Sudan border row

Oil tensions flare in central Sudan

Officials from Sudan's north and south have said an international court should resolve a border row that threatened to drag the country back to civil war.

The dispute concerns the ownership of the oil-rich Abyei area. The government in Khartoum and officials in the south both claim it as their own.

Heavy fighting there last month left nearly 90 people dead and forced some 50,000 people to flee their homes.

The border dispute had threatened a fragile peace deal signed in 2005.

After years of deadlock, the two main parties in Sudan's north and south agreed to go to the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) in The Hague to resolve the Abyei dispute.

The arbitrators' first job will be to take a fresh look at an earlier failed attempt to reach a deal over the boundary, the BBC's Amber Henshaw in Khartoum reports.

A senior northern official has said that if the panel supported that existing ruling then it would have to be implemented, but if it rejected it, the arbitrators would have to draw up a new border.

At stake is control of a large part of Sudan's oil wealth, our correspondent says.

The agreement is part of a series of measures to defuse the situation agreed earlier this month, including plans to deploy police and a joint army battalion, which is expected to take full control of the town by the end of the month.