(Bloomberg) -- Sudan’s foreign minister said her country would work with regional mediators to resolve a border dispute with Ethiopia, potentially deescalating a row that’s put the African nations on the verge of conflict.

“We are open for talks on land-related issues,” Mariam Sadiq al-Mahdi told reporters Thursday on a visit to neighboring South Sudan. “We need cooperation and good relations with Ethiopia.”

Sudan will “in the near future” work with the Intergovernmental Authority on Development, a bloc of eastern African nations, to resolve the border conflict, al-Mahdi said.

Ethiopian-Sudanese relations have frayed since a war erupted in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in November. Officials in Ethiopia’s ethnic Amhara region have pressed the government to seize land to which Sudan claims ownership based on colonial treaties. Deadly clashes have taken place in al-Fashqa, a fertile farming area straddling the border.

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