Tabu Butagira and Agencies
12 October 2007
Khartoum — THE Sudan People's Liberation Movement, the political wing of the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army, has suspended its involvement in the national unity government in Khartoum until its northern partners meet a long list of demands, the secretary general of the party said yesterday.
The SPLM said its northern partners had failed to implement parts of the 2005 comprehensive Peace agreement that ended a 21-year civil war.
These include boundary demarcations and the redeployment of northern troops from the south.
Mr Pagan Amum of the SPLM told a news conference on Thursday: "The SPLM has recalled all ministers and presidential advisers from the government of national unity."
"Presidential advisers, ministers and state ministers will not report to work until these contentious issues are resolved," he added. South Sudan's President Salva Kiir warned recently there could be a return to war if the deal was not respected.
Some 1.5 million people died in the conflict - Africa's longest civil war - which pitted the mainly Muslim north against the Animist and Christian south.
No consultation
"The leadership, the political group and our chairman called the advisers and the ministers and the state ministers to our headquarters in Juba and they are going to be there until we resolve the contentious issues," Yasir Arman, deputy SPLM secretary general, told the BBC.
The Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed two years ago has been looking increasingly fragile over the last few weeks as important deadlines have been missed.
Mr Arman said the CPA had been violated in several ways and the north's National Congress Party had disregarded the wishes of the SPLM leader Mr Kiir, who is also the country's vice-president.
"They are not consulting Mr Kiir; they are not consulting our ministers; they are taking many decisions - including expelling the representatives of the (UN) secretary general and different diplomats in Khartoum - without taking the opinion of the SPLM into consideration."
The decision by the SPLM/A which fought the Khartoum government for more than 20 years, is the culmination of months of tension and disagreement between the two main partners in the national government.
Khartoum raids
In September, heavily armed police stormed three SPLM offices in Khartoum, vandalised property, and in one case, broke down a door in raids the SPLM says followed libelous attacks against senior SPLM officials in the national media.
The U.S. envoy for Sudan, Mr Andrew Natsios, said last week that relations between the northerner and southerner politicians had deteriorated into a "poisonous" political atmosphere. "We are deeply concerned with the health of the comprehensive peace agreement (between north and south)," Mr Natsios told reporters after a 10-day trip to Sudan.
Mr Amum said the contentious issues that needed resolution included "the obstruction of democratic transformation, lack of initiation of a national reconciliation and healing process ... non-completion of Sudanese army deployment (and) lack of transparency in oil sector operations."
The two warring parties - the SPLA/M and Khartoum government - in 2005 agreed on six protocols, among them the Machakos Protocol, which provides Southern Sudan with the right to self- determination and the right to secede after the six-year period.
The late John Garang, Sudan's former first vice president and then head of SPLM warned on January 9, 2005 after the signing of the comprehensive peace accord that the new-found unity with the Khartoum government would become unilaterally dissolved if the peace accord, ending the war in the country is breached within the next six years.
Garang was adamant about the full implementation of the peace accords, which allows the SPLA to become part of the national army, contributing a total of 12,000 soldiers in the joint national force, among them 1,500 troops stationed in Khartoum.
Garang died a year later on July 30 in a Ugandan presidential helicopter crash on the Sudan-Uganda border. His death is still a subject of debate with his wife Nyandeng backtracking on her earlier statement that the cause of the former guerilla leader's death was purely an accident. A few months ago she said it was a planned accident.
The 2005 peace agreement laid down wealth and power sharing arrangements between the national government and the semi-autonomous government in the south but the two sides have argued over many aspects of implementation.
Oil reserves
The SPLM says that it has not been able to establish how much it is due from oil revenues and it complains that not all northern troops have evacuated their positions in the south.
The southerners have consistently raised doubts about the sincerity of the National Congress Party, the northern party which dominates the national government, saying it has been implementing the peace agreement selectively and has tried to renegotiate some aspects of the text. The most contentious issues include the protocol on the oil-rich Abyei area, demarcation of the north-south border and withdrawal of northern forces from the south.
Kony talks
Peace in Sudan was key to the initiation of the South Sudan mediated peace talks between the rebel Lord's Resistance Army and the government in Kampala. The CPA also opened South Sudan to Ugandan businessmen.
Many foreign merchants including thousands of Ugandans flocked to open businesses in various towns of South Sudan. The economic livelihood of South Sudan hugely depends on routine supplies from Uganda.
In Kampala, Internal affairs minister and leader of the government peace delegation, Dr Ruhakana Rugunda, was optimistic the fall out between the SPLM/A and Khartoum would not affect the on-going peace talks between Kampala and LRA. "Let us not speculate. The peace talks are on course and the two parties will resume the talks in Juba after they complete their respective consultations," he said.
He, however, said Uganda would not try to "interfere" with a view of resolving the conflict.
"As far as we (Uganda government) concerned, (the dispute) is an internal matter and the parties should be respected as they handle it in the manner they consider more appropriate in the governance of their country," Dr Rugunda said. But the fallout could bring fresh worries about peace in northern Uganda because Khartoum has in the past supported the rebel LRA.
President Museveni has insisted that with or without the peace agreement with Kony rebels, peace would return to the north.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2007 The Monitor. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
