Sudanese opposition leader Turabi to meet Garang in France

DOHA, Nov 15 (AFP) — Sudan’s opposition Islamist leader Hassan al-Turabi said Saturday he will meet with Sudanese rebel leader John Garang in France in “the next few days” to discuss the peace process in Sudan.

Turabi told AFP that as well as Garang, two other opposition chiefs, Sadek al-Mahdi and Mohammed Othman Merghani, will participate in the meeting that “we want to broaden, unlike the bilateral meetings between John Garang and the government,” who are trying to finalise a peace deal.

Turabi did not say where or when the meeting will be held.

“All the parties concerned agreed to the meeting and we are preparing for this meeting,” he said in Doha, where he arrived Thursday at the invitation of Al-Jazeera satellite television station.

Turabi is to appear on a talk show “Sharia (Islamic law) and life” on Sunday night, his wife Wisal al-Mahdi earlier told AFP in Cairo.

This is Turabi’s first trip abroad since his release from nearly three years of detention on October 13.

Sudan’s war erupted in 1983 when Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) took up arms against Khartoum to end domination of the mainly Christian and animist south by the Arabised, Muslim north.

Turabi backed the 1989 military coup which brought President Omar el-Beshir to power but was removed from key political posts after losing a power struggle with Beshir in 1999.

He was arrested along with many of his followers in February 2001 after his Popular Congress Party signed a memorandum of understanding in Switzerland with southern rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA).

A Sudanese government official had said the deal, which called for joint peaceful resistance to Beshir’s government, was a “conspiracy, subversion and a threat of violence.”

The president’s office said last month that his release was part of efforts to “prepare for the coming peace era” in Sudan as the Khartoum government and the SPLA make major strides toward ending their 20-year civil war.

More than 1.5 million people have been killed and more than four million people displaced in the conflict.

The government and SPLA have made dramatic progress toward ending the war during the last 15 months of negotiations in Kenya, with the US government expecting a final settlement to be signed by the end of the year.