KHARTOUM, Sudan, May 3, 2012 (AFP) - Prominent Sudanese on Thursday said they had formed a group to promote brotherhood between north and South Sudan despite a recent border war.

The North and South Sudanese Brotherhood Society will push people-to-people links as a way to reduce tensions, they said.

"This is a suitable time to have a people's effort to push the two governments towards a peaceful solution to the issues," Mahjoub Mohammed Salih, who heads the society, said at a launch ceremony. He is the chief editor of Al-Ayam, a daily newspaper.

Among its projects, the society plans to host workshops for journalists to help them reduce tensions between north and South, said Al-Tayib Z. Al-Abdin, deputy head of the society and an adviser to the vice-chancellor at the University of Khartoum.

Universities in both countries will discuss cooperation in training and research, and the society also hopes to forge links between businessmen on each side of the border, Abdin added.

"We requested our brothers in South Sudan to have a similar society, and they have started already," he said.

The 80 members of the northern organisation include businessmen as well as migratory cattle herders who live along the border.

South Sudan won independence in July after a 1983-2005 civil war in which about two million people died.

But tensions mounted over the disputed border and other unresolved issues including oil fees, culminating in a month of fighting between northern and Southern armies from late March until late April.

In the most serious unrest, South Sudanese troops occupied the north's main oil region of Heglig for 10 days, a move which coincided with Sudanese air strikes across the border.

Nationalist feeling has intensified in Sudan as a result.