Sudan said to be ready for talks with SPLM-N rebels

December 12, 2011 (KHARTOUM) – An official representing the ex-opposition Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Sudan’s new government has revealed that doors are now open for a negotiated settlement to the crisis in South Kordofan and Blue Nile.

Sudan’s border states of South Kordofan and Blue Nile are the scene of an armed conflict between government forces and rebels of the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North (SPLM-N), which was aligned with the ruling party in the neighboring country of South Sudan before it seceded from Sudan in July.

Osman Omer Al-Shareef, a leading member of the DUP and the newly appointed minister of external trade, said that his party had persuaded the government to enter into dialogue with the SPLM-N.

Al-Shareef’s party has recently joined the “broad-base” government formed by the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) of president Omer Al-Bashir after protracted talks.

“The government of which we are now members is prepared to hold talks with the warring sides in the two states,” he said in a statement reported on Monday by the Khartoum-based daily Al-Ayyam.

Al-Shareef’s revelation stands in contrast with the government’s avowed intent to use military means to end the SPLM-N rebellion.

Khartoum has reneged on an agreement it signed with the rebels under AU mediation in the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa in June. The deal was supposed to lead to a ceasefire and arrangements to integrate SPLM-N forces into the Sudanese army and recognize the movement as a legal political force in Sudan.

The government later slapped a ban on SPLM-N activities in the country and asserted that any future negotiations with the SPLM-N must be conducted without a third party and inside Sudan.

The rebels, which Khartoum accuse of being backed by South Sudan, rejected Khartoum’s conditions and forged an alliance known as the Sudanese Revolutionary Forces (SRF) with rebel factions from the western region of Darfur, the scene of a separate conflict, vowing concerted efforts to bring down the government.

According to UN figures, the conflict which erupted in South Kordofan in early June and later spread to Blue Nile in early August has displaced more than 80,000.

The conflict is rooted in failure to implement provisions of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) between Sudan and South Sudan in relation to the two states whose population largely fought alongside southerners in the war which the CPA ended in 2005.

(ST)