Sudan national unity govt in place next week – EU

Sept 16, 2005 (UNITED NATIONS) — Sudan’s new power-sharing government will be in place next week, the European Union’s top aid official said on Friday after talks with Sudanese officials.

“There will be 30 ministers, 30 vice-ministers. The foreign minister was quite sure,” EU Development Commissioner Louis Michel told Reuters after meeting Foreign Minister Mustafa Osman Ismail on the margins of a United Nations summit.

Sudanese officials earlier this week said a struggle over the energy ministry was delaying formation of a post-civil war government which was expected to be announced on Sept. 7.

A peace deal agreed in January gives the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) 52 percent of the government and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) 28 percent. Other northern and southern political parties will share the remaining seats in government.

The government was originally scheduled to be in place by early August but was delayed after the newly appointed vice president, SPLM head John Garang, died in a helicopter crash.

Sudan’s north-south civil war, Africa’s longest, killed around two million people, mainly through disease and hunger. Issues of oil and ethnicity complicated the conflict.

SPLM sources have told local media that control of the energy ministry was vital for the group’s standing among southern Sudanese.

Sudan produces over 300,000 barrels of oil a day and says output will rise to 500,000 barrels a day by the end of 2005.

The EU, the world’s largest aid donor, will spend 164 million euros for projects in north and south Sudan this year, Michel said.

While he was optimistic about the future of Sudan, Michel said the situation remained “fragile”.

“The Sudanese question is a mixture of the most awful conflict causes you can imagine,” he said. “You have fundamentalism, you have ethnic problems, geostrategic problems, you have the oil issue, you have many things.”

“It will remain difficult and the international community will have to back Sudan for a long time,” he said.

(Reuters)