Sudan warns it could reject south split over Abyei

Sudan's President Omar Hassan al-Bashir said he would not recognise South Sudan as an independent state if they claimed the disputed oil-producing Abyei border region, deepening a crisis ahead of the July split.

"If there is any attempt to secede Abyei within the borders of the new state we will not recognise the new state," Bashir told a crowd on Thursday in the Southern Kordofan state in a televised speech.

South Sudan voted in January to split from the north ending decades of civil war. Bashir had said he would be the first to recongise the new nation.