NCP member proposes meeting on border conflict
April 1, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – The Shura Council of the ruling National Congress Party (NCP) in Sudan has been called to hold a meeting on the escalating security situation in the country’s border regions.
A number of military confrontations erupted over the last week along the poorly defined borders between Sudan and South Sudan, stoking fears that the two neighbours could slide back to an all out war.
Sudan accuses South Sudan of aiding rebels seeking to overthrow Khartoum’s government, a charge Juba denies.
Abu Ali Majzoub, the head of the NCP’s Shura Council, on Sunday proposed that the council holds an emergency meeting to discuss the latest developments of the military conflict in the borders.
Addressing members of the council in Khartoum, Al-Majzoub that talk of peace in Sudan after South Sudan’s secession proved to be a grand international conspiracy targeting Sudan, calling for public “alertness and vigilance”.
“We in the Shura Council tell President Omer Al-Bashir and state leaders that we need to hold an urgent meeting to look at the conspiracies around us,” he said.
He added that Sudan had respected the will of southerners to secede and form their own state but the current situation proved that the matter was never about peace or secession but about “a grand international conspiracy against Sudan.”
Sudan’s president Omer Al-Bashir has declared a state of mobilisation and formed a committee to undertake training of the Popular Defence Forces, the governments paramilitary.
Similarly, South Sudan’s President Salva Kiir Mayardit ordered governors of states bordering Sudan to initiate public mobilization.
(ST)