UN chief urges implementation of south Sudan peace

November 19, 2007 (UNITED NATIONS) — U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged the Sudanese government and former southern rebels on Monday to stand by a peace agreement that ended two decades of war and warned against talk of rearming.

The Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) pulled its ministers out of the coalition government last month, accusing Khartoum of stalling on the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) that ended Africa’s longest civil war.

On Sunday, the SPLM accused President Omar Hassan al-Bashir of “threatening and calling for war” in a speech he gave in honor of a government-allied militia charged with a string of atrocities.

Pagan Amum, Secretary-General of the SPLM, said he deplored the comments by Bashir at celebrations organized by the Popular Defence Forces (PDF) militia on Saturday.

In his televised speech, Bashir called on the PDF “to open training camps and to gather mujahideen not for the sake of war but to be ready for anything,” without giving details of their purpose.

Asked about Bashir’s comments on rearming, Ban urged all parties to implement the peace agreement faithfully.

“It is not desirable for the parties concerned in (the) Darfur situation, particularly parties to the CPA, to make such kind of unilateral statement,” Ban told reporters.

“I hope again that the parties concerned should make a faithful implementation (of the peace agreement),” he said.

African Union and UN-brokered peace talks aimed at ending the separate civil war in the west of the country between Khartoum and Darfuri rebels have fizzled out after most insurgent groups boycotted them.

AU and UN mediators met Darfuri rebel groups in Juba in southern Sudan on Monday to try to encourage them to unify their positions ahead of direct negotiations with the government, Ban’s spokeswoman Michele Montas said.

Ban said he was in talks with industrialized countries in a bid to secure critical helicopters and trucks needed for a 26,000-strong U.N./African Union peacekeeping force due to start operating in Darfur at the start of next year.

Sudan has resisted non-African participation in the hybrid force in what Western countries see as a delaying tactic to hold up deployment of the force, which is due to replace a hard-pressed African Union force already on the ground.

Ban said he hoped to resolve the issues of the composition of the force so it could deploy as planned.

(Reuters)