Sudan's President Omar Hassan Al-Bashir Thursday said he would retake the disputed oil-producing Heglig region after border clashes with South Sudan that have edged the two African neighbors closer to all-out war. In a speech on Thursday, the Sudanese leader, dressed in military uniform, told thousands of supporters in the Sudanese state of North Kordofan: “Heglig is in Kordofan.” “We will not give them an inch of our country, and whoever extends his hand on Sudan, we will cut it,” Bashir told the rally in El-Obeid, the state capital. “These people don't understand, and we will give them the final lesson by force,” he said in the speech broadcast on state television, dancing and waving his walking stick. “Heglig is not the end, but the beginning.” “America will not invoke sanctions on them, and the (UN) Security Council will not, but the Sudanese people are going to punish them,” declared Bashir. On Tuesday, the Security Council discussed possible sanctions against both Sudan and South Sudan in a bid to halt a wider war after border fighting broke out on April 10. Global powers have voiced alarm over the worst violence seen since South Sudan seceded last July under the terms of a 2005 peace settlement, and have urged the two to stop fighting and return to talks. South Sudan seized Heglig last week, claiming it as its rightful territory and saying it would only withdraw if the United Nations deployed a neutral force there. The tensions prompted Bashir to say he would “liberate” South Sudan from its rulers, a sharp escalation in rhetoric that suggested tensions would not end until the South's SPLM was toppled.
