Sudans set deadlines to resolve outstanding disputes Published duration 9 October 2011

image caption The two leaders need to resolve a number of tricky post-separation issues

Sudan and South Sudan have set deadlines to resolve disputes that remain outstanding since they became separate countries in July.

Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir said several committees had been set up to deal with all the issues.

He was speaking alongside South Sudan President Salva Kiir, who was visiting the Sudanese capital Khartoum for the first time since independence.

The leaders insisted that, despite the tensions, they were committed to peace.

"My brother al-Bashir and myself are all committed to ensure none of these issues take us back to war," Mr Kiir told a joint news conference.

"There might be some elements on both sides that would like to take us back where we came from, that is war, but I repeat here that we left the war since 2005, and we are not going back to it again."

South Sudan became independent on 9 July after two decades of civil war that left some 1.5 million people dead.

But relations between the two have been strained by a failure to agree on how to share Sudanese oil revenues and assets as well as its debt burden, and how to deal with the ongoing border tensions and the disputed region of Abyei.

"We have agreed to have committees and have given them deadlines to reach a solution on all the pending issues," Mr Bashir told the news conference.