DUP denies reports on minister’s defection from Sudan government

May 6, 2012 (KHARTOUM) – A leading member of the ex-opposition Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in Sudan has reaffirmed his party’s commitment to partnership with the ruling National Congress Party (NCP), accusing unnamed sides of spreading rumors to undermine it.

Citing an anonymous DUP source, the Khartoum-based daily Arabic newspaper Al-Sahafah reported on Saturday that the DUP-affiliated minister of state at the foreign ministry, Mansour Youssef Al-Ajab, has tendered his resignation to the party’s leader Mohamed Osman Al-Mirghani in protest of his “marginalization” in the ministry.

But the DUP’s member and minister of trade, Osman Omer Al-Sharif, denied the news on Sunday, saying that Al-Ajab is currently in Rabat, the Moroccan capital, representing Sudan at a summit of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD).

Al-Sharif accused unnamed parties of spreading rumors in order to undermine the participation of the DUP in the government.

The DUP joined the NCP government of President Omer Al-Bashir in December last year despite strong internal dissent. Al-Mirghani justified the decision by saying it was “necessary to save the country.”

Other key opposition forces refused, or were not invited, to join the government but they remain divided over pursuit of regime change, as advocated by the Popular Congress Party (PCP) of Hassan Al-Turabi, or dialogue with the NCP as advocated by the leader of the National Umma Party (NUP) Al-Sadiq al-Mahdi.

Al-Sharif said there are strategic and political reasons for why his party joined the government, adding that the DUP is committed to national agendas.

“We love Sudan and work for Sudan” he said. He further insisted that the events in Darfur and Kordofan makes the country need its people more than any other time.

He went on to criticise opposition forces, accusing them without names of being “empty barrels that make loud noise”.

(ST)