Sudan points fingers at France in stirring this week’s demonstrations
December 12, 2009 (PARIS) – The Sudanese government today accused France of standing behind the demonstrations staged this week by a coalition of Northern opposition parties along with the Sudan People Liberation Movement (SPLM).
His peer Nafi Ali Nafi said that to an “old sheik” visited France recently as part of the plan by Paris in reference to Hassan Al-Turabi the leader of the Popular Congress Party (PCP).
The SPLM chief and the president of South Sudan government was also in France last month for talks with officials there.
The Umma party leader and former Prime Minister Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi is scheduled to start a five day visit to Paris on Monday.
Relations between the two countries are thorny over a variety of issues including hosting of the Sudan Liberation Movement (SLM) leader Abdel-Wahid Al-Nur who is one of the major rebel groups in Sudan’s western region of Darfur.
The French military presence in neighboring Chad with which Sudan has witnessed military escalation is adding to the difficulty and also Paris’s support of the International Criminal Court (ICC) which issued an arrest warrant for Sudanese president Omer Hassan Al-Bashir.
Paris is pressing hard to exclude Bashir from the France-Africa summit hosted by Egypt and the Le Monde has said that the Elysee palace may move the conference to another country if Cairo insists on inviting Bashir.
The tense relations may have contributed to growing incidents of kidnapping French aid workers in Darfur and also in Chad.
This week a group by the name of Falcons for the Liberation of Africa has claimed the kidnappings of a French agronomist with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and two unidentified staff of relief agency Triangle in the Central African Republic (CAR).
The group asked for direct contact with the French government and changes in Paris’s policy in Africa.
On November 30, the group threatened it would kill the aid workers but did not specify a deadline.
(ST)