Rebels Say Sudan VP's Dialogue Call Misleading
Sudan's vice-president has misled the public by inviting rebels for talks, the insurgents in South Kordofan state said on Thursday, calling for dialogue under a U.N. Security Council resolution.
President Omar al-Bashir's regime had long rejected negotiations with the Sudan People's Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N), who have been fighting for almost two years in the South Kordofan and Blue Nile regions.
But on Tuesday the government's most powerful vice president, Ali Osman Taha, said the insurgents and opposition parties were welcome to join talks on a new constitution for the country.
SPLM-N chairman Malik Agar told Agence France Presse that Taha's appeal was "for internal consumption and misleading to the Sudanese, and to an extent, the international community".
In a written message, Agar said the rebels were, "on the basis of 2046, ready to start negotiations" with Khartoum.
He was referring to U.N. Security Council Resolution 2046 passed in May last year.
It called for an end to fighting between Sudan and South Sudan along their disputed frontier and demanded talks to settle outstanding issues including the war between Khartoum and the SPLM-N.
Negotiations should take place on the basis of an agreement which the SPLM-N signed in June 2011 with Bashir's assistant Nafie Ali Nafie, the U.N. said.
That agreement, which was not implemented, recognized the SPLM-N as a legal political party.
It committed the SPLM-N and the Islamist government to a "political partnership" in the two states and a national vision that recognized the country's diversity.
Taha "tried to avoid" the Nafie agreement and the Security Council resolution, said Agar, who was governor of Blue Nile until fighting began there in September 2011.
He said the government has been misleading by mooting negotiations under the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement which ended Sudan's 23-year civil war.
The CPA led to South Sudan's separation in July 2011 after an overwhelming vote in a referendum.
South Kordofan and Blue Nile both have large non-Arab communities and got special status under the CPA, which said they would have "popular consultations" as well.
"The popular consultation got buried with the end of the CPA," Agar said.
Defense Minister Abdelrahim Mohammed Hussein last week for the first time said his country was ready to engage in talks with the SPLM-N, but specified they must be "under the umbrella" of the CPA.
South Sudan armed and trained SPLM-N when it was part of the South's rebel force but says it cut military ties before the South's independence.
Khartoum's accusation that the South continued to back SPLM-N after fighting began in South Kordofan and Blue Nile was the major impediment to improved bilateral relations.
A way forward emerged only after Sudan and South Sudan early this month finally reached a deal in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
They settled on detailed timetables to resume economically vital oil flows and to implement other key pacts including a demilitarized border zone designed to cut cross-boundary rebel support.
The war in the two states has occurred largely out of world view as Sudan -- citing security concerns -- severely constrained the movements of foreign aid workers, diplomats and reporters seeking to visit the region.
More than 200,000 people have fled the area to South Sudan and Ethiopia as refugees, the U.N. says.
An estimated one million more have been affected inside the two states, where a senior U.N. aid official has said people were surviving on "roots and leaves".
Opposition parties have also rejected Taha's invitation for talks on a new constitution, which is needed to replace the current document based on the CPA.
Source: Agence France Presse
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