Sudanese VP urges Uganda to probe into Garang death

Sep 07, 2005 (KAMPALA) — Sudanese Vice President Salva Kiir discussed an investigation into the death of his predecessor, John Garang, with Uganda’s president, according to a statement from the president’s office Wednesday.

In their talks Tuesday, Kiir and Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni also discussed the possibility of Sudanese soldiers joining forces with the Ugandan army to fight the rebel Lord’s Resistance Army that has continued a 19-year insurgency in northern Uganda and is based in southern Sudan, the statement said.

Onapito Ekomoloit, Uganda’s presidential spokesman, declined to give any more details of the discussions or say how long Kiir would be in Uganda.

Garang died in a July 30 Ugandan military helicopter crash, flying back to Sudan from Uganda, where he had been visiting Museveni, a longtime ally.

On Aug. 11, Kiir succeeded Garang as vice president in Sudan’s postwar unity government. Kiir also became leader of the former rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement and president of the autonomous government in Sudan’s south that was set up under the January peace accord between the mainly Muslim Arab north and rebels in the mainly animist and Christian south.

(AP/ST)