...A delegation led by the Sudanese external trade minister, Abdel Hamid Mussa Kasha, was in the autonomous Volga River republic of Tatarstan over the weekend, talking oil with the Tatneft company and checking out Mi-17 helicopters, optical sighting devices, trucks and passenger planes...Sudan has extensive oil fields, which happen to lie on the front lines between the northern and southern forces. One joint venture has already gone to work there, a consortium of three companies: Talisman of Canada, Petronas of Malaysia and the China National Petroleum Corp. Since pumping began in August, the consortium has been producing about 220,000 barrels a day -- not much by international standards, but enough to double Sudan's military spending. That, plus the lure of a lot more oil, has caught the attention of the authorities in Tatarstan...One factor that has kept Sudan from crushing its rebels has been the country's extreme poverty. There were reports that crewmen tossed bombs out of planes by hand, without much expectation of accuracy. But the prospect of oil money could tip the balance; what was once a fight over the attempted Islamization of the largely Christian south has now become a fight over access to oil fields. With precision optical sights from the Kazan Optic Mechanical Factory, the advantage could soon lie with the Arabic north.