Juba - South Sudan President Salva Kiir has invited his Sudanese counterpart Omar al-Bashir to meet in Juba on April 3 to try to resolve a conflict over oil payments, a southern official said on Wednesday.
There was no immediate comment from Khartoum. The visit would be Bashir's first to South Sudan's capital since the African nation became independent in July under a 2005 peace agreement that ended decades of civil war with Khartoum.
The two have been locked in a row over how much the landlocked South should pay to export oil through the north. Juba shut down its oil fields in January in protest after Khartoum started taking some crude to make up for what it said were unpaid fees.
Bashir and Kiir are expected to sign final agreements on two deals brokered by the African Union that ensure the free movement of citizens in one another's territory. Sudan had threatened to treat southerners as foreigners from April.
South Sudan also hoped there would be progress with oil issues at the summit, said Anne Itto, deputy secretary-general of the ruling Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM).
She said Juba was offering to pay Khartoum $2.6-billion plus transit fees and a pipeline grant as compensation for allowing oil exports through Sudan. "I believe he (Bashir) would be interested in coming because I think nobody in the world wants to fight all the time," Itto told reporters in Juba.
"We are willing to do a number of things. I think this is a very great opportunity. What I cannot say is whether Khartoum will be reasonable enough," she said.
Juba would not sign an oil deal at any price and still rejects Sudan's proposal of fees totalling to $36 a barrel, she added. South Sudan has offered to pay around $1 a barrel.
The African Union hopes the agreements on citizenship will pave the way for an oil deal, the most pressing issue because oil is the lifeline of both countries' economies.
Sudan's cabinet has warned that southerners living in the north would have to get residency or work permits by April 8 or risk being treated as foreigners, highlighting their lingering legal uncertainty.
More than 350 000 southerners have moved to South Sudan since October 2010 after decades living in the north, but 700 000 southerners remain, the United Nations says.
Both countries also need to mark the joint border and find a solution for the disputed border region of Abyei. North and south also regularly accuse each other of supporting rebels on the other's territory. - Reuters
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