Sudan: Nafie predicts collapse of opposition reconciliation
January 10, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – A senior official in Sudan’s ruling National Congress Party (NCP) has said that the reconciliation between opposition leaders Hassan Al-Turabi and Al-Sadiq Al-Mahdi will not last for long.
The reconciliation was mediated by fellow opposition figures who said that the two leaders had also agreed to unite behind the goal of toppling the regime.
But for Nafie Ali Nafie, the NCP’s vice-president and assistant to president Bashir, the reconciliation is frail and will not last.
Nafie, who was speaking to reporters in the capital Khartoum on Tuesday, also said that opposition political parties would not cope with the NUP’s refusal to have relations with rebel armed groups and the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement North, which is fighting the government in South Kordofan and Blue Nile States.
Sudanese opposition has been divided over how to deal with the government. While all parties seem to agree on the necessity of a radical change, they disagree on the method.
Al-Turabi’s party and other opposition groups advocate a popular uprising modelled on the revolutions seen in some Arab countries, but they often omit to mention whether they would be willing to cooperate with rebel groups in the country’s peripheries to create a merger of armed and civil strife to topple the regime, as alleged by the government.
On the other hand, the NUP continues to straddle the divide. It has refused to join the NCP’s newly formed government but its leader Al-Mahdi also refused to join the camp of parties calling for a popular uprising, saying he prefers dialogue to reform the regime.
Nafie accused opposition parties of seeking to win the NUP over to their side, saying this was evidence of the weak state of the opposition.
In a separate context, the presidential assistant criticized the United States for allowing South Sudan to receive its weapons exports, saying it’s a compelling evidence of Washington’s double-standards and blatant bias in favor of Juba.
The US president Barack Obama this week authorised his administration to allow South Sudan to receive US weapons, less than eight month since the south seceded from Sudan, in July.
Sudan, which remains under US sanctions, is banned from receiving weapons from Washington.
Nafie said that lifting the ban on weapon exports to South Sudan at a time that it was witnessing a “civil war” and its army, the SPLA, was “cleansing” some tribes is a testament to the double and conflicting standards of Washington.
(ST)