Kenya, Sudan's southern neighbor, is seen as one of the main conduits for arms that are going to both sides, the Khartoum government in the Muslim Arab north, and the Sudan People's Liberation Movement in the mainly Christian and animist south.

Other weapons shipments are running through Sudan's eastern borders with Chad and Libya despite U.N. and EU arms embargoes, according to U.S. officials.

"They're coming from all directions," Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, declared on Jan. 26, citing reports from U.N. peacekeepers in several Sudanese provinces.

"We heard that it's not just small arms but some heavier munitions that seem to be flowing in. … In a region where you have porous borders, there are undoubtedly weapons coming from all directions. We would like an accounting."

In recent months, tension has been mounting in Sudan in the run-up to the elections due in April and the independence referendum in the south, which must be held before Jan. 9, 2011.

Southerners are expected to vote overwhelmingly for secession, which they insist includes most of the country's oil-producing zones. These contain the equivalent of 6 billion barrels.

The Khartoum government depends on oil exports for the bulk of its revenues. It will not relinquish these vital areas, which straddle the north-south border, without a fight.

An independent southern state could hardly survive without them.

In recent weeks, according to relief agencies working in the south, where most of the fighting in the civil war occurred, government forces have been moving into the flashpoint oil regions.

These actions have heightened concerns that the civil war, in which more than 2 million perished from the fighting and the associated famines, could erupt once more.

The Brussels-based International Crisis Group says that "key elements of the 2005 agreement have not been implemented" and that the Khartoum government has failed to produce legal reforms to ensure free and fair elections, the first multi-party polls since 1986.

"Sudan is sliding toward violent breakup, and time is running out," warned Fouad Hikmat, the crisis group's Sudan adviser.

According to various sources monitoring the situation in Sudan, there has been a fairly steady flow of weapons into the vast country since the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement despite the arms embargoes.

A Swiss research institute that monitors arms transfers identified some of these weapons as part of a large shipment found aboard a Ukrainian freighter hijacked by Somali pirates on Sept. 25, 2008.

These weapons, including 33 Russian-built T-72 main battle tanks, were supposedly destined for Kenya's armed forces but have now been located in southern Sudan.

The Sudan Human Security Baseline Assessment, part of a Small Arms Survey conducted by Switzerland's Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, says that satellite imagery confirmed that the tanks were currently deployed at military headquarters in southern Sudan.

The hijacked vessel, the MV Faina, also carried heavy artillery, 23 ZPU-anti-aircraft guns and 812 tons of ammunition when it was seized in the Gulf of Aden.

Ukraine's state-owned arms exporter Ukrspetseksport said at the time the weapons were being transported to Mombasa, Kenya's main port, for delivery to the Kenyan army -- even though it is largely equipped with U.S. and British systems.

The Faina was released by the pirates five months later on Feb. 5, 2009, after a ransom of $3.2 million was paid by the ship's mysterious owners. It docked at Mombasa on Feb. 12, where the weapons were unloaded and handed over the Kenyan military.

The Kenyan government denied at the time that the tanks and other weapons were intended for the Sudanese rebel forces in Juba, the southern capital.

The Faina's cargo was believed to be one of four arms shipments to Sudan from Ukraine, which became a major supplier of Soviet-era arms following the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago.

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