The United States is worried about the flow of arms into southern Sudan ahead of a nationwide April election, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations said.

"We heard today from the U.N. that it is not just small arms but some heavier munitions that seem to be flowing in," U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice told reporters after a U.N. Security Council meeting on Sudan.

"We weren't given specifics on that," she said. "But we have seen, in the violence that is taking place in the South, a higher degree of sophistication and lethality of the weapons employed, and that's a source of concern."

Washington believes some of the weapons are coming from northern Sudan. "But I imagine that weapons are also coming from elsewhere and we would like a full accounting," Rice said, adding that it was a region with "porous borders" and that weapons were coming from "all directions."

Human Rights Watch warned on Sunday that repression of political opponents in both Sudan's North and semi-autonomous South was undermining the prospects for Sudan's first democratic elections in 24 years, scheduled for April.

source: Reuters

photo: EPA