Key Sudan militia merges with main southern rebel group

NAIROBI, Oct 31 (AFP) — Southern Sudan’s main rebel group and a key pro-government militia also based in the south of the war-ravaged country announced a merger on Friday, less than a week after the militia’s leader tore up a six-year-old alliance with Khartoum.

The deal reached in Nairobi between the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement/Army (SPLA) and the SPLM-United comes at a time when the SPLA and Khartoum are in the final stages of talks aimed at ending 20 years of civil war.

The two groups agreed in a declaration “to an immediate merger of the two movements” and their forces.

“This has to make Khartoum worry because it is in their interest to have many groups in southern Sudan so as to dilute the strength of the SPLA,” reacted one Sudan watcher in Nairobi.

“This deveveloment makes us want to know what other militia commanders will do, whether Khartoum will keep them onside or whether they will go to the SPLA,” he added.

The declaration was signed in Nairobi by SPLA Chief of General Staff Salva Kiir and SPLM-United Commander-in-Chief Lam Akol.

Salva Kir said the SPLA had approached all the pro-Khartoum factions in the south, which number about 30, with a view to joining the southern rebellion.

At the start of the civil war Lam Akol was an SPLA commander but he broke away in the early 1990s and began flirting with the government, which gave him a ministerial portfolio in 1997.

On October 25, Lam Akol accused Khartoum of breaking the terms of the accord they struck in 1997 by denying him permission to visit his fighters in the areas of Upper Nile province they control.

The SPLA and Khartoum are widely expected to sign a comprehensive peace accord by the end of this year.