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KHARTOUM-Sudan is "on the brink" of a new civil war following more than a week of north-south clashes in the disputed oil-rich town of Abyei, a senior southern official said on Monday.Pagan Amum, secretary general of the southern Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), told reporters northern troops were building up around the remote central town, with southern troops likely to follow.Amum said the way to avoid a full-scale conflict was for all troops to leave the town, to be replaced by a U.N. peacekeeping force or, eventually, joint north-south military units."We are on the brink of war as we speak. Clashes have already happened and forces are building up," he said before a news conference in Khartoum.Sudan has witnessed sporadic, sometimes fierce fighting in recent weeks in the Abyei region, which is claimed by both Khartoum and the southern government.Some 21 northern Sudanese army soldiers and an unknown number of southerners were killed last week in fighting that followed a week of skirmishes sparked by a local dispute. The clashes have displaced tens of thousands of people.A two-decade-long civil war fought by Sudan's government and southern rebels and complicated by issues of ethnicity, ideology and oil ended with a 2005 peace deal and a coalition government formed by the SPLM and the northern National Congress Party.But ties have been strained by the failure to agree on borders or a local government for Abyei. At stake are a nearby oil pipeline and installations that produce around half of Sudan's daily output of 500,000 barrels of oil, and grazing grounds and territory coveted by northerners and southerners.
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