South Sudan will help the north get relief on around $38 billion in debt, as long as the north "co-operates" on a border dispute and other issues in the countdown to the country's split, a southern official said.
Sudan's oil-producing south is due to separate from the north on July 9 after its people overwhelmingly voted to secede in a referendum in January - a vote promised in a 2005 peace deal that ended decades of north-south civil war.
The sides remain at loggerheads over a list of issues ahead of the split, including ownership of the disputed Abyei border area, the scene of clashes in recent days, and the handling of the country's crippling debt.
South Sudan has already said it plans to introduce its own currency after the division and will need the co-operation of its old civil war foe to redeem the old Sudanese pounds circulating in its system. "We are ready to join the north in joint efforts for debt relief," said Pagan Amum, secretary general of the south's ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM), at the end of a week-long meeting with northern leaders in Ethiopia.
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