Sudanese VP meets leading opposition leader
CAIRO, June 11 (AFP) — Sudanese Vice President Ali Osman Taha has held talks here with one of his government’s leading political opponents, Egypt’s official MENA new agency reported Friday.
The discussions between Taha and Mohamed Osman al-Mirghani, head of the Democratic Unionist Party, focused on the peace process in Sudan.
The agency added that Taha briefed the leader of the DUP, the second largest of Sudan’s traditional political groups, on the recently signed peace potocols between his govenment and the rebel Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM).
Taha was also said to have stressed to Mirghani the “comprehensiveness of the political solution in Sudan.”
MENA quoted Mirghani, who also doubles as head of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA), a grouping of northern and southern opposition groups, as saying dialogue between the opposition the government will continue in Cairo.
He further called on “all opposition forces to return to Sudan and participate in the national dialogue,” MENA said.
On Wednesday Taha met members of his country’s opposition groups for the first time.
During the talks, it was agreed to continue to “pursue dialogue with a view to examining the mechanisms for a comprehensive political solution to bring about peace,” MENA said.
The protocols signed by the SPLM and Sudanese government calls for the conveneing of general elections by the third year of a six-year interim period.
They also state that during the interim period, the ruling party of President Omar al-Bashir will hold 52 percent of executive and legislative positions, the SPLM 28 percent, other northern groups 14 percent and six percent for other southern groups.
Sudanese government officials and SPLM representatives are expected to resume negotiations on June 22 in an effort to hammer out the technical details of the protocols, paving the way for the signing of a comprehensive peace deal.
An agreement would end more than two decades of civil war in the country between the mainly animist and Christian south and the majority Muslim and Arab north, which has cost an estimated two million lives.
The deal does not, however, address the conflict in the western region of Darfur that erupted early last year.
Taha left Cairo for Khartoum late Thursday after a two-day visit during which he explained details of the protocols to the Egyptian leadership and briefed it on the peace process in Sudan.
He was originally scheduled to travel on to Libya and then Saudi Arabia for similar talks, and it was not immediately clear why he returned home instead.